Meg Howrey Quotes

I realized I still wanted to dream about the person I would become, not actually be her.

Sometimes it's just better to suck up the fact that you are an asshole and decide that tomorrow is the day you will start being the person you intend to be.

When you are asleep you can't tell whether or not you are alone, or diminished, or whatever. I have nothing, I thought. But that's not true. I have her absence. You can see it clearly. Look for the edges of my existence that surround it.

When you step from the wings onto the stage you go from total blackness to a blinding hot glare. After a moment you adjust, but there is that moment. like being inside lightning.

But Gwen got better that year. She seemed fine. She seemed happy, or at least not unhappier than anybody else. Who's happy?

And I had forgotten to get more Sweet'N Low, so I had to drink coffee as bitter as I am.

I tucked this thought inside me like a fortune into a cookie.

I kept it a secret, which is the only way to maintain ownership of something.

You shouldn't ask for forgiveness.
Because if you ask someone to forgive you, and they do, then that's twice that you've taken something from them. First the betrayal, and then the absolution.

Right away we were very good at it, and you like what you are good at, and being better than other people at something is fun. Is that love?

I don't see how knowing why I have this fear will help stop it. That's why I don't see any point in going to a shrink. Knowing why you broke the glass
because you weren't paying attention to where the edge of the table was, dummy
doesn't mend the glass, doesn't ensure it won't happen again, that you won't break something more precious next time.

Nothing matters except what you decide to make matter and so I could just say--poof--I don't matter to Andrew and I don't and it's all nothing. And he doesn't matter to me. And all the little awkward clumsy little mechanical machinations? All those things we do in our minds? None of those matter either. Especially those. So it's not a sad thing like, 'Oh boo-hoo, the world has no meaning, what a drag,' but more like, 'Hey! Nothing matters!

Everyone is in pain. Most people think pain in massage means something is happening, and if they can endure it, they will be improved, but sometimes the only thing pain means is pain.
It a very easy mistake to make, though.. She'd refused for the longest time to get therapy or take any psychoactive drugs because she'd felt that the "darkness" was necessary, not just for her as an actor, but as a human being.
You didn't have to feel slightly terrible all the time, as it turns out. Her only worry now was that slightly terrible was not a flaw in her chemistry, but an appropriate response to being the kind of person that she was. "You're very hard on yourself," Luke said.
"Can you imagine the kind of person that I'd be if I wasn't hard on myself?" she said back. Luke should be sympathetic. He was hoping to improve the human race, and it would be hard to get there if the human race thought it was already fantastic, thanks very much.
Well, she could still go dark, if she needed to, she could go dark right now. Yesterday she had done Terror. She'd done Fear and Dejection and Remorse. And because she had done Remorse as fully as a person could do it, she knew that she hadn't ever experienced that kind of pure Remorse before. What she'd felt in the past was polluted Remorse, because half the time she was sorry she was also privately resentful and building a case about why the actions that had led to Remorse could be justified.

Beautiful gay men are God's gift to women. They're like a consolation prize for ... well, for everything else about being a woman.

Talent equaled desirability. Talent trumped good looks or a halfway decent personality. Talent was a personality.

By the time a little girl has become a young woman she has learned how dangerous a thing it is to dream.

What I was thinking, in that strange way you can think without words while you are dancing, think in glyphs, think in numbers, was how stupid it is that any of us are here, living. What an absurd game we play with ourselves, as if it mattered. We are all mad, all insane, all deluded. It is all for nothing, really, in the end.

Was there a magical love-of-the-dance moment, when the muse Terpsichore called to us and we lifted our arms and spun at one with the divine music of the Universe? I think not. Although pride and obsession can feel like love, I guess.

I suppose I do have rivals in the company, but none of them is as challenging as the ever-present, alternate version of me: always one giant unreachable step ahead.

I cannot bear this love. Nor the loss of it.

I made the sympathetic face, and the interested face, and even the impressed face. I did not say, 'In the name of all that is holy, cease this incessant drivel, you pretentious ass.

Promise is a word like any other. Words can go in any direction. It's only the body that is incapable of lying.

I had dreamed that if this moment happened I would be elated and triumphant and flooded with relief, but when you have been keeping company with anxiety and fear for a long time it's hard to shake them off immediately. Also I hadn't really thought about anything behond the immediate goal: getting in. Now I was in and now I was going to have to do this thing, ballet, and not just think about the day I would do it. I realized I still wanted to dream about the person I would become, not actually be her. I was worried that I would work hard and nothing would happen, that I was as good as I would ever be.

There are Russians, and then there are Russian ballerinas from the Kirov.

I said to her "I won't be happy if I get in and you don't," and Mara gave a look and said "Yes you will.". I realized that she was right and that needing people and caring about them were two very different things. I tucked this thought inside me like a fortune into a cookie. It was a secret and it made me feel powerful, even though I didn't understand why.

In life though, most beginnings are so quiet you don't even know that they are happening. Suddenly you're in the middle of things as if there were no beginning at all. Maybe you'll try to retrace your steps, but it's a useless endeavor because you're always going to miss the essential, initial clue. You might say, "Oh, here is where it all began," but you're always going to be too late.

In classical pas de deux, the man controls everything. He picks up the girl. He puts her down. He turns her, takes her weight, stops her, and she must always go where he leads. The woman submits to all this completely. But her submission is not feeble. In fact, the only reason she can submit so utterly is because she is very strong in herself. In her center. She does not collapse, or cave, or stutter-step, or flop. No, she holds herself very consciously, very confidently. She is centered within her own weight. So the man always knows where she is. He can feel her. He can absorb her strength.

I wanted to get away. I wanted something of my own. I wanted to be someone's star.

I should think people would be disappointed if they watched that kind of movie and then came to see us dance and none of us slit our wrists onstage or made ourselves vomit or got on the backs of motorcycles while wearing tutus and started fucking each other.

It's a moment to learn. This was the thing about miscalculations, errors, and mistakes. You admitted them, you used them as teachable moments, and then you moved on. You didn't forget, but you didn't dwell.

She feels a little sad. Is she sad? Helen considers an alternative: She is dehydrated.

The only thing worse than taking things personally is being told you take things personally. And how am I supposed to take things, if you please? Why bother talking to anyone at all if you are not supposed to consider anything that is said to be at all personal?