Kevin Tang

“We'd not been given perfection, not godliness, not symmetry, not gracious measurement, not a bad hand, nor a curse; we'd not been given anything other than a life to spend together; our lives, not easy or free from pain; we'd been given only a real life, dreadfully normal and sublime, and I would no longer betray its beauty by wishing it otherwise.”
― Chloé Cooper Jones, Easy Beauty

“You could have made me come home,” I say. “No, I can only try to be the person you want to come home to.”
― Chloé Cooper Jones, Easy Beauty

“throughout all this, I was acutely aware of how quickly the experience of beauty dissipates and is replaced by boredom and the dullness of obligation.”
― Chloé Cooper Jones, Easy Beauty

“Late-sleeping Utopians, especially, persist like mercury. I am a fanatic myself, although not a woman of temperament. I get nervous at scenes. I stole a washcloth once from a motel in Angkor Wat. The bellboy was incensed. I had to give it back. To promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity—I believe all that. I go to parties almost whenever I am asked. I think a high tone of moral indignation, used too often, is an ugly thing. I get up at eight. Quite often now I have a drink before eleven. In some ways, I have overshot my mark in life in spades.”
― Renata Adler, Speedboat