Status Updates From Happy Hour

"Aren't all women in paintings detached, simply unknowable? And in that way they become so easy to attribute just about anything to."
Maybe the portrait shows that in me. I don't see it that way." A waiter dropped off a gin martini for Ester. "But you know, I always prefer the way I see things,"Because it's all mine, and no one can convince me otherwise."

“I do wonder whether my memories should stay only mine, or have they ever been? Each time I tell someone a story over a watery Pernod, it opens that someone to the possibility of the memory; that's why I adore talking.
Then maybe the stories really are mine, not because they happened to me but because of the indelible details I give.
Maybe it is the how that makes them valuable.”

“Am I not always shouting into the void, waiting to be responded to with courtesy? Is that not what I seem to struggle with each moment, wrestling to get other people to see me how I see myself? To write is a task that feels like it is forcibly propelling you forward. I wanted to inscribe myself somewhere, anywhere, besides onto someone else's life.”

“There was a ruthlessness in their eyes that told me they didn't feel the need to be acceptable. When a man thinks he's above social mores, he is to be avoided at all costs. Such men have no appreciation for beauty, art, or intelligence. They only desire conquering, and when they can enact that in even small amounts, it is not advisable to be around.“

What did it mean to meet anyone in the first place? In some moments, the diary, and the diaries that came before, felt like old coats Ican then put on and store away for a couple of seasons, unearthing them only when seized with nostalgia. But in the present, the past feels ill-fitting, leaving space for wind to come at my back.

Isa's always keeping me on my toes." I shrugged. "How can you really ever know someone? People change and are in a constant state of revealing themselves. To think you know everything about someone is to leave yourself vulnerable to surprise."

"I was destined to beguile, to attract, to seduce, and, in the final reckoning, to cause suffering in all those who sought their happiness in me." Gala thought it was very humorous. She said, "So you!"

I am not strong I want to tell them. I am simply enduring.

My mama wanted me to experience things and go out into the world like she did, Gala says that was her legacy, and I was only continuing it and still am.

Resilience is key. It would be nice if whenever someone said, "I love you," it meant, "Everything will be fine." It's all reassurance anyway

“I was not sorry. You can't buy charm, but you certainly can spend it, and if that's true, you can certainly withhold it too. I didn't laugh either because no one said anything funny, but they all laughed anyway. I sipped at my drink, each sip endorsing my silence. It is truly a gift that I can alter the disposition of an occasion entirely. I am small but my mood radiates.
I can make a whole room unbearable.”

what kind of Charli XCX-coded, performative, TikTok-buzzword-riddled book is this