Olivia Laing Quotes

[of Nan Goldin] In an afterword to Ballad written in 2012, she declared: ‘I decided as a young girl I was going to leave a record of my life and experience that no one could rewrite or deny.

At some point, you have to set down the past. At some point, you have to accept that everyone was doing their best. At some point, you have to gather yourself up, and go onward into your life.

Hopper’s paintings are full of women like her; women who appear to be in the grips of a loneliness that has to do with gender and unattainable standards of appearance, and that gets increasingly toxic and strangulating with age.

What does it feel like to be lonely? It feels like being hungry: like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast.

People don't like to talk about alcohol. They don't like to think about it, except in the most superficial of ways. They don't like to examine the damage it does and I don't blame them. I don't like it either. I know that desire for denial with every bone in my body: clavicle, sternum, femur and phalanx.