Mars Nicoli

“When women cover songs by men, they don’t swap the pronouns. Is this a.) a lack of anxiety about convention, b.) a biologically essential fluidity native to humans with vaginas and/or two X chromosomes, c.) rampant queerness among women singers, or d.) the universal male default?”
― Andrea Lawlor, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

“Paul liked to pick out the secretly cool people, people too cool to flash their coolness. The cool people were not always or even usually the same as the shiny people. Often someone shiny was too conventionally good-looking to be cool but they were still compelling, in terms of sheer wattage. Paul knew he wasn't good-looking enough to be shiny, but he could be cool in certain contexts. Cool was relational and conceptual; cool took work, cool was a meritocracy which, with all its flaws, he still preferred to the aristocracy of genetics.”
― Andrea Lawlor, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

“Though her mother's dire predictions of robbery, murder or kidnapping had never come true (yet another way Violet had disappointed her), she had been right about how harsh and ugly London was. If you couldn't find the quiet joy in that ugliness, it might be a bit much for some people.”
― Jonathan Sims, Thirteen Storeys

“We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.”
― Oscar Wilde