Francesca Lia Block Quotations

Writing is very cathartic for me. As a teacher, I hear many students say that writing can be painful and exhausting. It can be, but ultimately I believe that if you push through, the process is healing and exhilarating.

Writing is literally transformative. When we read, we are changed. When we write, we are changed. It's neurological. To me, this is a kind of magic.

I think depression creates in me an urgent need to write, but I also believe that daily stress, and even the positive stress of intense happiness, can compel me to express myself through the written word.

It's scary to become a woman in this world. We have to understand that some of the messages we get, messages that we are not enough, are there to keep our power in check. We can't buy into these messages.

Write with abandon and no constraints for first draft. Cut brutally and save in separate files on second draft. Add conflict; don't be afraid to make your characters suffer. Read what you love. Write what you love. Love.

I am constantly thinking ahead to what I want to write about in the future, and when I'm done with one project, I give myself a little time and then start the next one.

I'd sit around dreaming that the boys I saw at shows or at work - the boys with silver earrings and big boots - would tell me I was beautiful, take me home and feed me Thai food or omelets and undress me and make love to me all night with the palm trees whispering windsongs about a tortured gleaming city and the moonlight like flame melting our candle bodies.

Under the pink Harlequin sunglasses strawberry dangling charms, and sugar-frosted eyeshadow she was really almost beautiful.

I love Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I also love more cerebral poets like H.D. and Emily Dickinson. My parents subscribed to a monthly poetry periodical, and as a teenager I was introduced to Denise Levertov, who was an influence.

Metaphors are an interesting example of creating magic in prose.

You are in my blood. I cant help it. We can't be anywhere except together

Just like any woman,...we weave our stories out of our bodies. Some of us through our children, or our art; some do it just by living. It's all the same.

Everything was chocolate ice cream and kisses and wind.

I dont know about happily ever after… but I know about happily, Weetzie Bat thought..

Everything is an illusion; that is the whole thing about it - illusion, immitation, a mirage. It makes me too sad. Its having like a good dream, you know you are going to wake up.

Sometimes I wanted to peel away all of my skin and find a different me underneath.

Weetzie wished she could shake blue glitter around all of them - keeping them sparkling and safe.

Everything was fine, but Weetzie wanted a baby. “How could you want one?” My Secret Agent Lover Man said. “There are way too many babies. And diseases. And nuclear accidents. And crazy psychos. We cant have a baby,” he said.

What sexual preference do you hope she has?” “Happiness.” Isnt that cool?

Stories are like genies...They can carry us into and though our sorrows. Sometimes they burn, sometimes they dance, sometimes they weep, sometimes they sing. Like genies, everyone has one. Like genies, sometimes we forget that we do. Our stories can set us free...When we set them free.

This was not a fearie tale. This was not the movies. This was life. It hurt more. It was excruciating. It was excruciatingly beautiful.

Pianos, unlike people, sing when you give them your every growl. They know how to dive into the pit of your stomach and harmonize with your roars when you’ve split yourself open. And when they see you, guts shining, brain pulsing, heart right there exposed in a rhythm that beats need need, need need, need need, pianos do not run. And so she plays.

Ugster vinyl pumps, Partridge Family records, plastic daisy jewelry, old postcards. . . . It's a magpie Christmas market.

Any love that is love is right.

I will be thin and pure like a glass cup. Empty. Pure as light. Music. I move my hands over my body - my shoulders, my collarbone, my rib cage, my hip bones like part of an animal skull, my small thighs. In the mirror my face is pale and my eyes look bruised. My hair is pale and thin and the light comes through. I could be a lot younger than seventeen. I could be a child still, untouched.

Morning. Strawberry sky dusted with white winter powder sugar sun. And nobody to munch on it with

Witch Baby wanted to ask Ping how to find her Jah-Love angel. She knew Raphael was not him, even though Raphael had the right eyes and smile and name. She knew how he looked--the angel in her dream--but she didn't know how to find him. Should she roller-skate through the streets in the evenings when the streetlights flicker on? Should she stow away to Jamaica on a cruise ship and search for him in the rain forests and along the beaches? Would he come to her? Was he waiting, dreaming of her in the same way she waited and dreamed?

You must reach inside yourselves where I live like a story, not old, not young laughing at my own sorrow, weeping pearls at weddings, wielding a torch to melt sand into something clear and bright.

But be careful; sand is already broken but glass breaks. The shoes are for dancing, not running away.

I saw my own blood and I thought, how could I live in a world where this exists- where love can become death?

It was like when we were little kids and we played games on the ivy-covered hillside in the backyard. We were warriors and wizards and angels and high elves and that was our reality. If someone said, Isn’t it cute, look at them playing, we would have smiled back, humoring them, but it wasn’t playing. It was transformation. It was our own world. Our own rules.

The most Beautiful people are the ones that don't look like one race or even one sex.

I love Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I also love more cerebral poets like H.D. and Emily Dickinson. My parents subscribed to a monthly poetry periodical, and as a teenager I was introduced to Denise Levertov, who was an influence.

She began to feel like the plastic doll she had been named after, without even a hole where her mouth was supposed to be.

My heart is a teacup with hairline cracks. I feel like I have to walk real carefully so it won't get shaken and just all shatter and break.

Let's not be afraid of anything that can't really hurt us.

You have to make your own family, your own life.

Any alphabet book for children where 'P is for Patti' Smith and 'X is for the women whose names we don't know' is something I can recommend, especially when the book is as well written, representationa lly diverse and vividly illustrated as this one.

It's not that I literally think I'm a fearie. It's just that I feel so different from most people. And this idea of a race living underground in caverns, spending all their days dancing and playing the fiddle and eating flowers and reciting poetry and sharing their dreams, that to me sounds much more real than the way people live in this world, hating and fighting and wanting and hurting.

Once upon a time . . . What time are we upon and where do I belong?

Our stories can set us free. When we set them free.

Okay. I wish for world peace,” Weetzie said. “I am sorry,” the genie said. “I cant grant that wish. Its out of my league.” “Then I wish for an infinite number of wishes!” Those people on fairy tales never thought of that. “People in fairy tales wish for that all the time,” the genie said. “They arent stupid. It just isnt in the records because I cant grant that type of wish.

The true warrior isn't immune to fear. She fights in spite of it.

I wanted to die, then. I wanted to destroy the body I was trapped in, become what she was, no matter what it took. No matter how much mutilation or pain. But he looked away, at me. He pulled my face down and pressed my lips against his like he was almost trying to suffocate us both.

I try to see the dark and light in everything. This is my way of comforting myself when I am dealing with those emotions.

That was when I cut my arms with a razor blade as a means of creative expression. I only did it lightly, just grazing the skin, to see the way the blood would bleed out, to make myself look tougher. Not like some of those kids who keep going deeper and deeper, wondering what they look like down to the bone, because it's a world that's so close and yet so far and so dangerous and so much their own. The only world that is their own.

When they first kiss, there on the beach, they will kneel at the edge of the Pacific and say a prayer of thanks, sending all the stories of love inside them out in a fleet of bottles all across the oceans of the world.

If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model with collagen-puffed lips and silicone-inflated breasts, a woman in a magenta convertible with heart-shaped sunglasses and cotton candy hair; if Los Angeles is this woman, then the San Fernando Valley is her teenybopper sister. The teenybopper sister snaps bug stretchy pink bubbles over her tongue and checks her lipgloss in the rearview mirror, . . . Teeny plays the radio too loud and bites her nails, wondering if the glitter polish will poison her.

If death is your lover, you don't got to be afraid ever that he will ever leave you

Maybe any love we ever have is an angel in whatever form...

All the things that girls feel they are not when they fear that if they become, if they are, they will no longer be loved by the sisters whose hearts they have not meant to break. And besides, if the sisters are gone and only the beloved remains with his dense curls and his lips, how safe are you then? You have to have him or you will die if the sisters are gone with their listening ears and their feet to rub and their bodies to dress and their shared loneliness.

At least the girls in stories were alive before they died.

You asked me who I thought I was before. I said maybe I was a fish because I love water and you said, you thought a mermaid, maybe. If you were a mermaid, you said, if you were a mermaid, I was the sea.

My mother said, "kiss him, darling, it's easy so natural" and I thought to myself, not with lips of stone, dear mother, not with lips of stone

It's important to tell your story. It's important to listen.

I wrote poetry from the time I could write. That was the only way I could begin to express who I was but the poems didn't make sense to my teachers. They didn't rhyme. They were about the wind sounds, the planets' motions, never about who I was or how I felt. I didn't think I felt anything. I was this mind more than a body or a heart. My mind photographing the stars, hearing the wind.

If you want to find the trail, if you want to find yourself, you must explore your dreams alone. You must grow at a slow pace in a dark cocoon of loneliness so you can fly like wind, like wings, when you awaken.

the rain is coming. little sister, the night broke. the thunder cracked my brain finally. the rain is coming, i promise you. i didn’t mean to but your tears will bring life back. purple flowers grow, the colour blood looks in the veins. they’ll sprout out of my chest. i promise you they’ll crack the ground, grow over the freeways, down the slopes to the sea. i’ll be in their faces. i’ll be in the waves, coming down from the sky. i’ll be inside the one who holds you. and then i won’t be.

Dear Angel Juan, You used to guard my sleep like a panther biting back my pain with the edge of your teeth. You carried me into the dark dream jungle, loping past the hungry vines, crossing the shiny fish-scale river. We left my tears behind in a chiming silver pool. We left my sorrow in the muddy hollows. When I woke up you were next to me, damp and matted, your eyes hazy, trying to remember the way I clung to you, how far down we went. Was the journey too far, Angel Juan? Did we go too far?

The circus tent was flowing pale in the rain like a fleshy flower lit from within. It seemed to bloom in the downpour. Drops of rain caught on Rafe's eyelashes, blinding him as the circus light struck them. He groped for the flap, that slit in the fabric that would reveal her to him. She was on the rope again, her skirt flashing with tiny mirrors, hair braided with petals. He looked up at her, dizzy with it, seeing her face framed in the parasol. There were bluish shadows around her eyes.

Tinys do not deserve safety. If they are to prove themselves, they must suffer and die or suffer and survive.

Besides, secretly, without knowing it herself, she had been waiting for a Beast to go to.

She wished she had a little yellow house of her own, with a flower box full of real flowers and herbs – pansies and rosemary – and a sweet lover who would swing dance with her in the evenings and cook pasta and read poetry aloud.

We both believe in monsters. But all the ghosts and demons are you. And all the angels and genies are you. All the kings, queens, Buddhas, beautiful boys. Inside you. No one can take them away. (Missing Angel Juan.)

I think that poetry is perfect for women raising children, with just bits of time and such need to connect to other women out of the isolation of motherhood.

His own voice was older than he was. Ancient, unearthed from some mystical subterranean place...The voice seemed to make his whole body ache. Maybe it made him bleed inside. I wondered if it hurt, if it burned in his throat.

...choose to believe in your own myth your own glamour your own spell a young woman who does this (even if she is just pretending) has everything....

Think of your pain like a bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.

Pain can give you sight or make you blind.

You make me feel like I have wings when you touch me.

I wanted him to hold me, to take care of me. To make the pain dissolve away. I know that this was part of what had ruined everything but I wanted it once more anyway.

No matter where I am, I am always loving you.

I dreamed you were standing in this dark place and you touched these dead flowers and they lit up like they were electric or something. Electric lilies. Lighting up the Valley.

There’s nowhere to escape,” Dobey said, jamming his hands into his pockets and staring into the Valley. That’s not true, baby,” said Desiree. She took his hands and pulled him to her, wrapping her legs around his torso. She could feel the sobs in both of them, but quiet, silenced by the kiss. They could escape inside each other.

What happens to the rest of something when you smash its heart?

In Mexico people wear hummingbird amulets around their necks to show they are searching for love. Here people pretend that they aren’t. Searching.

It was always a relief when she came home to him. Like water or food. Like music or that moment when you cut yourself with a knife and squeeze the skin and no blood oozes out.

I pounded through the houses, staggering down the hallways, falling down the steps. It was a hot streaky dawn full of insecticides, exhaust, flowers that could make you sick or fall in love. My battered Impala was still parked there on the side of the road and I wanted to lie down on the shredded seats and sleep and sleep. But I thought of the bones; I could hear them singing. They needed me to write their song.

Welcome Beauty, banish fear.

You are my Marilyn. You are my lake full of fishes. You are my sky set, my 'Hollywood in Miniature,' my pink Cadillac, my highway, my martini, the stage for my heart to rock and roll on, the screen where my movies light up.

i could see the veins through your skin like a map to inside you. how could skin be that thin? i was so afraid you might drop and break. i stopped breathing so you wouldn't.

Maybe he was real. Maybe I'd made him up. Either way, he didn't think I needed him anymore. Maybe he was right.

Pain didn't ever really stop, he thought; it just changed forms.

L.A. kills people.' Jacaranda said. 'You're lucky you're leaving. You'll be able to write.' She looked paler, going through another depression, smoking in bed in her lilac room. The walls were the color of her veins. She was getting too thin, even for the modeling. . .Jacaranda died last winter when the flowering trees were bare. You couldn't even tell which ones once cried the purple blossoms she named herself after.

Love is the worst earthquake there is. Can crush you to the thickness of your bones. Love can be like cancer sometimes. Terminal. It can make you vomit. It can make you want to cut it out. It can take you over against your will.

love is the only thing we have to save us

Beauty loved him more than anything, her Beast boy, but, secretly, sometimes, she wished he would have remained a Beast.

I stand here waiting. To disappear or sing.

War is being reminded that you are completely at the mercy of death at every moment, without the illusion that you are not. Without the distractions that make life worth living.

Sometimes she wore Levi's with white-suede fringe sewn down the legs and a feathered Indian headdress, sometimes old fifties' taffeta dresses covered with poetry written in glitter, or dresses made of kids' sheets printed with pink piglets or Disney characters.

We got quiet. The garden was combing her hair and putting on earrings. The house was full of dancing creatures, not male and female but both, two lovers in one body. The books downstairs were reciting their poetry to each other, rubbing together, whispering through the leather covers. Wine was flowing through the water pipes. You had caught my leaping heart in your hand like a fish.

Maybe her own tears were the poison that made her grow.

I was staring to learn how to forget the things that made me sad. It was like a charm you followed step-by-step, collecting and blending the ingredients, placing everything in its proper place, reciting the incantation. It was the magic of forgetting.

He was so handsome,but he didn't look well.He reminded her of a cigarette.

If Death is your father, you don't ever have to worry about what part of his body the disease will strike next. If Death is your lover, you don't have to be afraid that he will ever leave you.

But death is stronger than that and when you cover your eyes you are the one who can't see the dark. The dark still sees you.

She pushed the gardener away and called for them. In her sleep she had seen love. It was poisoning. It was possessing. Devouring. Or it was seven pairs of boots climbing up the stairs to find her.

I didn't tell him that what I was most scared of, most haunted by, was something I didn't understand and could never run away from. It was myself.

Same old boring boring story America can’t stop telling itself. What is this sicko fascination? Every book and movie practically has to have a little, right? But why do you think all those runaways are on the streets tearing up their veins with junk and selling themselves so they can sleep in the gutter? What do you think the alternative was at home?

Flowers are reincarnation. They come out of the earth of our ashes. Nothing else looks so soul-like.