Marta Franco

“I think that this is minor. Things will happen in your life—things will probably happen in your life—that will make this seem minor. Other things you’ll be able to feel guilty about.”
― Alice Munro, Runaway

“She thinks, ‘I’m telling him who I am. He’s interested in who I am.’

That is true, but I am curious about who she is because I want to fuck her. I don’t need all of this great interest in Kafka and Velazquez. Having this conversation with her, I am thinking, how much more am I going to have to go through? Three hours? Four? Will I go as far as eight hours? Twenty minutes into the veiling and already I’m wondering, what does any of this have to do with her skin and how she carries herself?

The French art of being flirtatious is of no interest to me. The savage urge is. No, this is not seduction. This is comedy. It is the comedy of creating a connection that is not the connection – created unartificially by lust. This is the instant conventionalizing, the giving us something in common on the spot, the trying to transform lust into something socially appropriate.”
― Philip Roth

“Refusing to drink or drinking only moderately must be done with diplomacy, because the Japanese believe that the only way you can really get to know people is to see how they behave when they are drunk.”
― Boyé Lafayette de Mente, Etiquette Guide to Japan: Know the rules that make the difference!

“Momma intended to teach Bailey and me to use the paths of life that she and her generation and all the Negroes gone before had found, and found to be safe ones. She didn't cotton to the idea that whitefolks could be talked to at all without risking one's life. And certainly they couldn't be spoken to insolently. In fact, even in their absence they could not be spoken of too harshly unless we used the sobriquet “They.” If she had been asked and had chosen to answer the question of whether she was cowardly or not, she would have said that she was a realist.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings