Tess Hallman

“But most of all, I remember space. I remember doing nothing. but doing it together, which made it something after all. Now when I put a dish in the microwave for thirty seconds I am paralyzed by the discomfort of unorganized time. Is thirty seconds enough to read something? Check the weather? Pee? I reach for anything to occupy me, but now I've spent all of my time wondering how I should spend it, and the machine beeps, and I have purpose again.”
― Emily Temple, The Lightness

“It was curious, later, to think of how easily I fell into things. If there were drugs around, I did them. You were in the moment--when everything back then happened. We could talk about the moment for hours. Turn it over in conversation: the way the light moved, why someone was silent, dismantling all the layers of what a look really meant. It seemed like something important, our desire to describe the shape of each second as it passed, to bring out everything hidden and beat it to death.”
― Emma Cline, The Girls

“But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“I waited to be told what was good about me. I wondered later if this was why there were so many more women than men at the ranch. All that time I had spent readying myself, the articles that taught me life was really just a waiting room until someone noticed you--the boys had spent that time becoming themselves.”
― Emma Cline, The Girls