MAUREEN CLAUDETTE

"Throughout the history of Western art there has been a tendency to exoticism the woman artist as an exception, and then paradoxically to use her unique status as a weapon to undermine her achievement"

I loved Janey and she was sexual, but looking at women was a way of looking at myself and, I suppose, a way of loving myself.

Having your heart broken is a tremendous way to learn about the world.

Not anyone who says, "I'm going to be careful and smart in matters of love," who says, "I'm going to choose slowly," but only those lovers who didn't choose at all but were, as it were, chosen by something invisible and powerful and uncontrollable and beautiful and possibly even unsuitable - only those know what I'm talking about in this talking about love.

"But then I got there [the marines] and...everyone was there because nobody knew how to stop whatever was happening at home. You can't leave places. The only useful job you can have in the places where everything is blown up is to care for the pieces."

"I mean, how can you belong somewhere if you've grown up in a place where you never belong."

It is bitter for the young to see what awful innocence adults grow into, that terrible vulnerability that must be sheltered from the rodent mire of childhood.

What is left after this? What can death loose in me after your embrace? Your touch, your limbs are more terrible to do me hurt. What can death mar in me that you have not?

Exhume those bodies. Exhume those stories. The stories of the people who dreamed big. And never saw those dreams to fruition. People who fell in love, and lost. I became an artist, and thank god I did! Because we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life.