"Why are we so sad?" I once asked in despair. "Why do we always feel so sad afterwards?" "Because we both belong to the same generation," I was told sadly, "and all our same worries come back to us at the same time..."

A possibly unfortunate book cover but the story is still poignant.

I can't stop thinking about this 💡

Decisions, decisions.

When I strip away my dreams, what I imagine to be my potential, all the things I haven‘t said, what I imagine I feel for other people in the absence of expressing it, all the rules I‘ve made for myself that I don‘t follow– I see that I‘ve done as little as anyone else in this world to deserve the grand moniker I. In fact, apart from being the only person living in this apartment, I‘m not sure what distinguishes me.

It was the most moving thing I had ever seen, painted so tenderly and with such a loose hand that it hardly seemed like it had been any work at all... I discovered it was Manet, one of my favorite painters. I wondered at this; was there something in his hand or his soul – or elsewhere – that was essentially him, so much so that it compelled me every time, and made me love everything that was his, without even knowing it was?

Anna loved and didn't love sex. Anna needed and didn't need it. Her relationship with sex was a convoluted partnership that rose from both her passivity and an unassailable desire to be distracted. And wanted. She wanted to be wanted.

Squalor is cozy to me and I love to place myself in situations of potential danger. My recklessness does not please me. I know that my sordid tastes are the expression of a death -- I want to punish myself -- I want to punish other people -- I long to be alone but I long to be loved. The pain I feel is leading me into darkness.

Something tripped me up while reading this. I can't put my finger on what. I hunted down a photo of Kim's flip-up sunglasses, though.

☠🍭🍄🍬

From the description I thought I would LOVE these girls, but it wasn't meant to be.

Death, making kindness and quirkiness cool again.

I put it off for so long, but I really enjoyed the writing. I even took screenshots of sentences to share with my boyfriend.

Perhaps "real wisdom," as author Joan Erikson said, only comes from "life experience, well-digested."

There were parts of this book I enjoyed, but it didn't blow me away. She really made me remember how invisible I felt as a young girl, how much I needed to be seen, & how it felt to be noticed. How it feels to be noticed now. I'm also now interested in the relationship b/t teenage girls and cults.