All Hours

“I write in spurts. I write when I have to because the pressure builds up and I feel enough confidence that something has matured in my head and I can write it down. But once something is really under way, I don’t want to do anything else. I don’t go out, much of the time I forget to eat, I sleep very little. It’s a very undisciplined way of working and makes me not very prolific. But I’m too interested in many other things.

And every day the world will drag you by the hand yelling, “This is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And this! And this!” And each day it’s up to you to yank your hand back and say, “No. This is what’s important.

Throughout his career, McQueen would rail angrily against women hating accusations, eventually telling a personal story that he hoped would silence his critics. As an eight year old boy, he explained, he had witnessed a terrifying act of domestic violence, directed at one of his older sisters by her husband. “I was this young boy and I saw this man with his hands round my sisters neck” he described. “I was just standing there with her two children beside me… I’ve seen a woman get nearly beaten to death by her husband. I know what misogyny is. Everything I’ve done since then was for the purpose of making women look stronger, not naive… I want to empower women. I want people to be afraid of the women I dress.”

Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”

The weight of a body beside you, no matter how you feel about the person inside of that body, and the sound of its inhalations and exhalations, late into the night: these become a form of ceasefire, at least until morning.

You ask me what it is that I want of you. I cannot tell you that, but I can tell you that what I want of myself is to love you , to love you a thousand times more, even, than I do!