Bella’s Reviews > Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A. > Status Update

we slowed down so much that it was as if we were swimming under water, the sky was so blue, everything else was October amber

the bitterness that shortens your life has been headed off at the pass by the wonderful paperback. light, fitting easily into most purses the humble paperback has saved a lot of relationships for me that would’ve ended in bloodshed

for about five years all my conversations with women were about diets; they always zeroed in on the pivotal reality of their life, which was that they were imperfect…if i did all that—why then, there i’d be in a room and you wouldn’t be able to tell me apart from all the other women who were clawing with their fingernails to maintain the same size.

id rather just be sadie thompson and get it over with, but im afraid id turn into a calvinist in hot rain, with transparent underlying motives and a worm-eaten, jungle-rotted bible as my brains downfall.

it’s a wonder women have anything to do with men at all, and no surprise they men have devised all kinds of schemes to bind women to them

i was almost thirty the late afternoon i finally got home to my town, and in the west an enormous luscious smoggy sunset cast itself in the air.

i not only gave up on the idea of finding an italian i didn’t mind, i gave up on the idea of finding anyone i didn’t mind. but i was still sure there was a grandiose golden sunset somewhere in the sky.

i did not become famous but i got near enough to smell the stench of success. it smelt like burnt cloth and rancid gardenias, and i realized that the truly awful thing about success is that it’s held up all those years as the thing that would make everything alright. and the only thing that makes things even slightly bearable is a friend who knows what you’re talking about.

last paragraph.

i have found that what usually brings this lethargy on is if the woman displays some special kindness. like making dinner.