Цитаты из книги Cleopatra and Frankenstein

"I think she's struggling."

"She's an artist. She's always struggling.”

"She was an artist, like you. With a I don't know how to say this well- an ego that is large but self-esteem that is small?" Cleo let out a husky laugh. "Sounds about right."

That is a dangerous thing.

Sometimes Santiago envied recovering alcoholics and drug addicts; at least they could abstain altogether. Food addicts still had to eat.

His family had taught him that the only way to be loved was to lie.

You could recognize an art student anywhere in the world, he thought. The quest for individuality had resulted in the opposite: complete predictability.

"I don't understand this obsession with happiness," she said. "Happiness is like the Hollywood sign. It's big, it's unattainable, and even if you do make it up there, what's there to do but come back down?"

I look at Frank. That was the thing about him. He noticed that. He noticed people. It was his gift. Or really, it was the gift he gave you. To be seen.

"The one thing I will not tolerate is absolutely anything less than perfection," says the woman in black walking ahead of me down Fifth.

"You don't stop bullshitting because you get old," she says.

"You get old because life's bullshit, I say.

"Frankenstein, she said, tracing his nose with her finger.

"Cleopatra" he said.

The night was a thousand black butterfly wings beating against her skin.

"Cleo's like a cat,” said Frank. "She can touch you, but you can't touch her. That's her thing”

Frank was from Manhattan, but this man was what Cleo thought of as a real American, the kind who grew up going to the big game and having sex with girls in the back of cars.

"My mom always used to say, don't fuck anyone who doesn't love

Manhattan," said Frank.

"Well, let's not be vulgar," said Miriam.

"At least she has an opinion" said Cleo, glancing at her father.

"I get that," said Audrey. "That's why girls always bounce back compliments. Like, if you say you like my hair, then I have to be all, no it's so gross and lank, your hair is amazing!"

Cleo laughed. "But if you tell a man he has nice hair," she said, "he's like, thanks, and my cock is huge."

"They're so skinny," Zoe said, lighting one with feigned casualness.

She was not really a smoker; she just hated to be left out.

"Cleo's too chic to smoke anything but slims," said Audrey.

"Chic as can be" deadpanned Cleo. "That's me.”

Maybe, she thought, this was what an orgasm with another person felt like, not knowing where they end and you begin.

Cleo was the first woman who could actually turn him on by criticizing him. She was smart about it, insightful in a way that made him feel defenseless but seen, really considered, for the first time in his life.

"I'm sorry I'm not Russian," Quentin said, desperately thinking of something to say.

"Polish is better," the boy said and shrugged. "You have less problems."