Bailey > Bailey's Quotes

“But the woman came to her them. The woman with hair of red like roses, hair of white like snowfall. She was young and old. She was blind and could see everything. She spoke softly, in whispers, but her voice carried across the mountain ranges like sleeping giants, the cities lit like fairies and the oceans-undulating mermaids. She laughed at her own sorrow and wept pearls at weddings. Her fingers were branches and her eyes were little blue planets. She said, You cannot hide forever, though you may try. I've seen you in the kitchen, in the garden. I've seen the things you have sewn -curtains of dawn, twilight blankets and dresses for the sisters like a garden of stars. I have heard the stories you tell. You are the one who transforms, who creates. You will go out into the world and show others. They will feel less alone because of you, they will feel understood, unburdened by you, awakened by you, freed of guilt and shame and sorrow. But to share with them you must wear shoes, you must go out you must not hide, you must dance and it will be harder, you must face jealousy and sometimes rage and desire and love which can hurt most of all because of what can then be taken away.”
― Francesca Lia Block, The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

“The fairy who was not old, not young, who was red roses, white snowfall, who was blind and saw everything, who sent stories resounding through the universe said, You much reach inside yourself where I live like a story, not old, not young, laughing at my own sorrow, weeping pearls at weddings, wielding a torch to melt sand into something clear and bright.”
― Francesca Lia Block, The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

“But be careful; sand is already broken but glass breaks. The shoes are for dancing, not running away.”
― Francesca Lia Block, The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

“She felt their envy and this broke her. The story ended, she couldn’t tell the rest, they’d hate her, she had to stop, she wasn’t any good, shut up you bad, bad, bad ugly girl and you don’t deserve any of this and so the spell was broken and she ran home through a tangle of words where the letters jumbled and made no sense and meant nothing, and the words were ugly and she was not to be heard or seen, she was blemished and too fat, too thin, not smart, too smart, not good, not a storyteller, not a creator, not a woman, not, not, not. All the things that girls feel they are not when they fear that if they become, if they are, they will no longer be loved by the sisters whose hearts have not meant to break. And besides, if the sisters are gone and only the beloved remains with his dense curls and his lips, how safe are you then? You have to have him or you will die if the sisters are gone with their listening ears and their feet to rub and their bodies to dress and their shared loneliness.”
― Francesca Lia Block, The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

“Sometimes you fall, spinning through space, grasping for the things that keep you on this earth. Sometimes you catch them. They can be the hands of the people you love. They can be your pets- pups with funny names, cats with ferocious old souls. The thing that keeps you here can be your art. It can be things you have collected and invested with a certain sense of meaning. A flowered, buckled treasure chest of secrets. Shoes that make you taller and, therefore, closer to the heavens. A suit that belonged to your fairy godmother. A dress that makes you feel a little like the Goddess herself.

Sometimes you keep falling; you don't catch anything.

Sometimes you fall, spinning through space, grasping for the things that keep you here. Sometimes you catch them. Sometimes you don't.

Sometimes they catch you.”
― Francesca Lia Block, Necklace of Kisses

“Relieved because what I dreaded most in the whole world was going to happen and I wouldn’t have to live with it anymore—the fear.
There is the relief of finally not being alone and the relief of being alone when no one can take anything away from you. Here she was, my beautiful fear. Shiny as crystal lace frost.”
― Francesca Lia Block, The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

“I dreamed of being a part of the stories—even terrifying one, even horror stories—because at least the girls in stories were alive before they died.”
― Francesca Lia Block, The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

“Wish on everything. Pink cars are good, especially old ones. And stars of course, first stars and shooting stars. Planes will do if they are the first light in the sky and look like stars. Wish in tunnels, holding your breath and lifting your feet off the ground. Birthday candles. Baby teeth.”
― Francesca Lia Block

“Magic can be found in stolen moments.”
― Francesca Lia Block

“Just like any woman,...we weave our stories out of our bodies. Some of us through our children, or our art; some do it just by living. It's all the same.”
― francesca lia block

“Any love that is love is right.”
― Francesca Lia Block, Dangerous Angels

“Nothing happened. And everything did. Your whole life you can be told something is wrong and so you believe it. Why should you question it? But then slowly seeds are planted inside of you, one by one, by a touch or a look or a day skateboarding in a park, and they start to burst out of old hulls shells and they start to sprout. And pretty soon there are so many of them. They are named Love and Trust and Kindness and Joy and Desire and Wonder and Spirit and Soulmate. They grow into a garden so dense and thick that it starts to invade your brain where the old things you were once told are dying. ”
― Francesca Lia Block, Wasteland

“What sexual preference do you hope she has?” “Happiness.” Isnt that cool?”
― Francesca Lia Block, Weetzie Bat

“Pain can give you sight or make you blind.”
― Francesca Lia Block

“Stories are like genies...They can carry us into and though our sorrows. Sometimes they burn, sometimes they dance, sometimes they weep, sometimes they sing. Like genies, everyone has one. Like genies, sometimes we forget that we do.
Our stories can set us free...When we set them free.”
― Francesca Lia Block

“The most Beautiful people are the ones that don't look like one race or even one sex”
― Francesca Lia Block

“You make me feel like I have wings when you touch me.”
― Francesca Lia Block, Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys

“Weetzie wished she could shake blue glitter around all of them - keeping them sparkling and safe.”
― Francesca Lia Block

“...choose to believe in your own myth
your own glamour
your own spell
a young woman who does this
(even if she is just pretending)
has everything....”
― Francesca Lia Block, How to (Un)cage a Girl

“Every girl is a goddess.”
― Francesca Lia Block

“The wishes might not come true the way you think they will, not everything will be perfect, but love will come because it always does, because why else would it exist and it will make everything hurt a little less. You just have to believe in yourself.”
― Francesca Lia Block, Dangerous Angels

“We both believe in monsters. But all the ghosts and demons are you. And all the angels and genies are you. All the kings, queens, Buddhas, beautiful boys. Inside you. No one can take them away. (Missing Angel Juan.)”
― Francesca Lia Block

“My mother says that pain is hidden in everyone you see. She says try to imagine it like big bunches of flowers that everyone is carrying around with them. Think of your pain like a big bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.”
― Francesca Lia Block, Witch Baby

“And then I cried a flood of tears as if I really were a mermaid who had absorbed too much sea into herself. The tears spilled like a balm, like a potion, like a charm. In them swam a little girl whose father was dying without ever having seen her. In them swam a girl whose mother’s magic – the only thing the girl envied more than anything else in the world, the thing that had made her invisible, the most precious thing –might be dying too. In them swam a green-haired girl who had never been touched by the boy to whom she was so devoted that she would have lived with him forever in a shack by the sea or a ruined sand castle even if he never made love to her. My tears were for me, but they were also for him. They were to wash away the thing that had frightened him so much so long ago. The wound inside his thigh. My tears poured out of me and he drank them down his throat. He drank them in gulps deep into himself, swallowing sorrow.
Someday,” he said, “when we are ready, I will give you back your tears.”
― Francesca Lia Block, Echo

“Do you know when they say soulmates? Everybody uses it in personal ads. “Soul mate wanted.” It doesn’t mean too much now. But soulmates – think about it. When your soul – whatever that is anyway – something so alive when you make music or love and so mysteriously hidden most of the rest of the time, so colorful and big but without color or shape – when your soul finds another soul it can recognize even before the rest of you knows about it. The rest of you just feels sweaty and jumpy at first. And your souls get married without even meaning to – even if you can’t be together for some reason in real life, your souls just go ahead and make the wedding plans. A soul’s wedding must be too beautiful to even look at. It must be blinding. It must be like all the weddings in the world – gondolas with canopies of doves, champagne glasses shattering, wings of veils, drums beating, flutes and trumpets, showers of roses. And after that happens you know – that’s it. This is it.”
― Francesca Lia Block, Missing Angel Juan

“Same old boring boring story America can’t stop telling itself. What is this sicko fascination? Every book and movie practically has to have a little, right? But why do you think all those runaways are on the streets tearing up their veins with junk and selling themselves so they can sleep in the gutter? What do you think the alternative was at home?”
― Francesca Lia Block, The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

“I pounded through the houses, staggering down the hallways, falling down the steps. It was a hot streaky dawn full of insecticides, exhaust, flowers that could make you sick or fall in love. My battered Impala was still parked there on the side of the road and I wanted to lie down on the shredded seats and sleep and sleep.
But I thought of the bones; I could hear them singing. They needed me to write their song.”
― Francesca Lia Block, The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

“Maybe one night I’ll be asleep and I’ll feel a hand like a dove on my cheekbone and feel her breath cool like peppermints and when I open my eyes my mom will be there like an angle, saying in the softest voice, When you are born it is like a long, long dream. Don’t try to wake up. Just go along until it is over. Don’t be afraid. You may not know it all the time but I am with you. I am with you.”
― Francesca Lia Block, The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

“I think when you are born an angel should say to you, hopefully kindly and not in that fake voice of an airline attendant: Here you go on this long, long dream. Don’t even try to wake up. Just let it go until it is over. You will learn many things. Just relax and observe because there just is pain and that’s it mostly and you aren’t going to be able to escape no matter what. Eventually it will all be over anyway. Good Luck.”
― Francesca Lia Block, The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

“Besides, secretly, without knowing it herself, she had been waiting for a Beast to go to.”
― Francesca Lia Block, The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold