Anna Dorn > Quotes

“Algorithms are demonic," I say. I really do feel this way. They take the art out of everything.”
― Anna Dorn, Exalted

“I sit down wanting to write the great lesbian love story, but wacko bitches just keep coming out.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume and Pain

“I hate going home, but guilt compels me. It’s not that I hate my family or anything. I just feel very uncomfortable around them and harbor the vague suspicion that they hate me, which isn’t entirely unfounded given that while they’ve been supportive in a material and financial sense, they mostly seem to find my personality, affect, choices, and demeanor to be unpleasant at best.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“I am sort of over Freud, who just feels like this secret language old white men use to make whatever they are talking about seem inaccessible. Freud just gives cloaked terms to universal aspects of the human experience, kind of like astrology. Freud is just astrology for men.”
― Anna Dorn, Exalted

“I like femininity — long hair and painted fingernails and dancing in my bra to Madonna. I like to be frivolous and free, and for someone else to get the bill.”
― Anna Dorn, Exalted

“Penelope laughs. Her teeth are very white for someone who doesn’t have a dishwasher.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“The weird thing about being a writer is that at 25, you’re passionate and eager to share what you consider to be your sui generis perspective, but you haven’t practiced enough to be effective, and no one takes you seriously either way. And then ten years later, you’ve finally written enough to know what you’re doing, but you’ve completely lost the sense of urgency, you’re officially middle-aged and shop at the Gap,”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“Exiting the freeway, I experience a brief moment of gratitude that I’m a lesbian. That I don’t have to get Botox or filler or a ponytail facelift because to do so would invite the male gaze, and it’s the female gaze I’m after, and we just want compelling, which is energetic and cannot be reduced to a visual.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“SpaceX is really romantic if you think about it, just a bunch of Pisces launching rockets into the sky.”
― Anna Dorn, Exalted

“As long as I’m busy working on a project, I can keep my impulse control issues in check. I just can’t let my brain go idle, that’s when the demons take hold, the demons that tempt me, et cetera.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“When I first moved to LA, I was constantly impressed and intimidated. Everyone was a producer or a director or an actress. Then I realized everyone was lying and delusional and a barista.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“I am not a new woman. I am acting out. I am the exact same bitch.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“I’ve always felt more comfortable with a new lover than with an old friend.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“as I am decidedly not butch. For this reason, it took years to convince people I was a lesbian. Most people thought I was just being an edgelord.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“As a difficult woman, I’ve always been drawn to LA: its cotton candy–colored smog and pre-apocalyptic climate, sunning lizards, lazy diction, palm trees, strip malls, bad values. It’s a goal-oriented town but pretends not to be, and I live for artifice. I want to be around people who are as concerned as I am that Brittany Murphy and her weird husband died within months of each other of the same mysterious cause, people who want to spend their evenings guessing what happened.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“I’m embarrassed I sent such a long text. Very unchill. But I’ve never been chill and it’s never stopped women from falling in love with me. Chill is the hallmark of a slow and uninteresting brain.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“When I was in elementary school everyone was obsessed with these things called pogs, which were just garishly decorated pieces of cardboard.”
― Anna Dorn, Exalted

“Think don’t speak the cancelable thoughts.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“I’d forgotten how fun it is to dance in front of mirrors. Halfway into the track, I accidentally burst out laughing, in a normal and hopefully not rude way, at the fact that I’m taking an Afro-Caribbean dance class in a gentrified neighborhood of East Los Angeles taught by a white woman for white women— a bunch of Rachel Dolezals shaking our nonexistent asses. Afterward, I become sad, feeling guilty about my obvious role in gentrification and my voyeurism into cultures I know nothing about, but which seem “exciting” in the abstract, in comparison to my mundane and sheltered existence.”
― Anna Dorn, Vagablonde

“I open a blank Google Doc and write: if psychotic, then write memoir.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“Wishful thinking, chica. I’ve never chilled in my life.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“What is this shit?” I ask, pointing to the stereo. “Vampire Weekend,” he says. I make a hacking noise, and he laughs his cloying laugh. “Their new album is pretty good.” I can’t think of a single thing to say to that. “What would you prefer?” he asks. “White noise,” I say. “The sound of myself talking. Cats screeching. A woman in labor.” I reach for the stereo and turn it off. “I’ve missed your negativity,” he says. “It’s refreshing in Los Angeles, the city of unchecked delusion.”
― Anna Dorn, Exalted

“Somehow I always end up becoming the type of person I once made fun of.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“I don’t like to be around women who are prettier than me,” I respond.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“She wears tortoiseshell glasses and a green ribbon in her hair, a precocious little brat.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“Once I started reading, I realized I liked books about angry, quick-witted women with major interpersonal issues, a genre known on Goodreads as “she’s not doing okay at all.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“My dream is a femme-presenting woman who can take charge, dominate me, slap me, objectify me, turn me into a little shiny object to be adored then punished. Forever a little girl in trouble.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“he formed his identity in reaction to me, as most siblings do.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“I still remember the quote on the book’s cover: “She was pink and gold, soft and sweet… too strong a temptation to resist.” I wanted to be a pink and gold temptation”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain

“I often struggle with conveying the appropriate emotional response, but excitement is always the hardest to muster. I suspect my blasé affect is a carefully calculated defense mechanism. And my defense mechanisms—it’s becoming increasingly clear—are no longer defending me. Maybe they never were.”
― Anna Dorn, Perfume & Pain