itselv’s Reviews > Daughter > Status Update

"No one warned me that with your child comes death. Death circles your growing body, and once your child has left it, death circles her too. This is why mothers don't sleep. This is why mothers don't look away from their children. This is why, even with a broken heart, a mother will bring herself back to life."

"Ani says that when a white man is described as a genius, even once, he can get away with anything including murder."

"You know, Natasha was saying, they say that grief is love with nowhere to go. I think that's true at first, but then, Natasha was saying, I think that undersells love. Love finds its rightful place."

"I told [my sister] we were identical in the parts of ourselves that our parents could not see or even imagine and those were the parts that mattered."

"A painter I love does these big paintings of rooms, the rooms are empty, but animated. A book left open, a drink half-finished, a lamp left burning. The rooms appear as if someone had just exited the frame."

This sounds beautiful.

"she had never worked, so she could measure her worth only through her children."

"Cherry said people saw depth in Rothko but it was only searching. Searching does not make you great, Cherry said. Searching makes you the same as everyone else. People use the word genius for Rothko not to elevate his art but to elevate their own tastes."

"like everything you do, your love has been a performance."