Without a child I could dance across the sexism of my era, whereas becoming a mother shoved my face right down into it. A latent bias, internalized by both of us, suddenly leapt forth in parenthood. It was now obvious that Harris was openly rewarded for each thing he did while I was quietly shamed for the same things. There was no way to fight back

She was asking me to describe myself as if I was a horse I owned when actually I was more like a radio program, an ongoing narration that I could barely recall.

I can never quite explain how the terms of my success are built upon an agreement to carry this person on my back for the rest of my life. There has to be a burden to keep everything in balance.

I would often whisper, Let's dream the same dream, right after we turned out the lights. He took it as a sweet sign-off, but I yearned for this joint dream so hard my teeth hurt. He didn't understand that you could create a world—a fantasy, a nightmare—and bring other people into it, not just artistically but in life. I was pretty good at getting p

The future itself was another lover, reaching backward in time to cup my balls. Instead of dangling in the present I was held, I was safe; I was gently squeezed and aroused by my never-ending preparations.

You had to withstand a profound sense of wrongness if you ever wanted to get somewhere new.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do that,” Jordi said. “Flatten ourselves like that. Erratic doesn’t have to mean crazy or irresponsible. Shouldn’t we be normalizing change?”

That was always my underlying fear: that someone I loved would look at me like a stranger. Or that I would take such a circuitous path away from someone that I could never find my way back to them.

He didn’t understand that you could create a world—a fantasy, a nightmare—and bring other people into it, not just artistically but in life.