Francesca Lia Block

“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.”

“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.”

“for frail but surprisingly strong fairies who had lost their way above groundfor burned mermaids and sick vampire girlsfor wild wolfish women with sharp teeth and leaves in their hair”

“Sylvie wishes the anti-depressants had been around when she was in her early twenties, not only to rescue her from the dark tunnels that came when her brother first got sick, but also to keep her from fucking all those assholes.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 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.”

“She wasn’t crying at all. This was what scared him the most. Where had she locked up the things he’d seen her feeling that day when she heard? She wasn’t that big a girl to hold all of it—to hold her brother’s life and his death inside of her. To hold all his long-limbed raging tidal motion and all the loss of that.”

“Everyone whirled around her, entranced by the stories in which they recognized themselves, but in the stories they were also more than themselves and it always felt at the end fulfilled, not meaningless and empty like life can sometimes feel.”

“Nightingale"Did I wound you, mutilate. Take away your voice. Did I cut something from you. Leave you locked in silence?This is what you do: you sing. Every part of you. Your locks of hair sing, your eyes, your hands, your smile. If I listen closely I can even hear your blood.Was I the one that took that away?Go down to the water where we used to swim. Stand under the sky at dawn when the sky is streaked with blood. Open your mouth and shout our secret to the waves. The ocean will be your voice. You won't have to carry anything alone. Little Sister, my Spring, April. Little nightingale. Sant at the edge of the water. Your voice will come back to you. Maybe. If I am silent.”

“I'll be inside the one who holds you. And then I won't be.”

“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.”

“I want him to see the flowers in my eyes and hear the songs in my hands.”

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

“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.”

“You can't doubt so much, Psyche”

“I will go to campus alone dressed in antique silk slips and beat-up cowboy boots and gypsy beads, and I will study poetry. I will sit on the edge of the fountain in the plaza and write.”

“My mother says that pain is hidden in everyone you see. She says try to imagine it like big bunches of flowers that everyone is carrying around with them. Think of your pain like a big bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.”

“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.”