out-of-context Lucy quotes

Welcome to a very rare public post! 

When I was researching Lucy Sante for this week's episode, I came across so many quotes that I absolutely loved but was unable to work into the interview. Just for fun, I'm copy-pasting a bunch of them here, devoid of any context or time stamp. (A hint: many of the transition quotes are from I Heard Her Call My Name, whereas much of the rest of it spans 20 years of interviews and essays available online.)  

All bolding is mine. Enjoy, and let me know if any of these speak to you! 

On transition...

“It appeared that transitioning did not involve piling on additional stuff; rather it was a process of removal, dismantling the carapace of maleness that had kept me in its grip for so long.”

“What was I doing with my time? I was "feeling." I was "transitioning." I wasn't capable of sustained thought or action in any other direction. I took on assignments, almost by reflex, but was unable to complete them. I may as well have experienced a religious conversion or been taken for a ride on a UFO.”

“A few minor disasters aside, I didn’t feel self conscious as much as I felt conscious, period.”

“I had always thought that if by some weird chance I ever found myself transitioning, I'd be slinking around, lurking in the shadows, wearing shapeless clothing to hide my shame. Instead I was pretty much forcing myself on people; I wanted to be seen. I sought invitations; I wanted to strut.”

“After I first saw Patti Smith perform, at Le Jardin in October 1973, I immediately went home and shaved off all my facial hair. I don’t know how closely I examined that at the time, although I knew it was significant.”

On writing...

“I hate all the fetishistic twaddle about books promoted by the chain stores and the book clubs, which make books seem as cozy and unthreatening as teacups, instead of the often disputatious and sometimes frightening things they are.”

“People are pulled into academia from all nations, races, and classes, and then they are all outfitted in identically dead language, the language of writing-by-committee, the language that anticipates every conceivable objection and neutralizes them with stacks of conditionals and armor-plated readymade phrases. If you want to make sure that your words are inclusive and kind, what you do is to become self-aware—you question every phrase, but you remain yourself and above all remain human. Your true language will involve belches and farts sometimes. It will have taste and touch and smell. Academic language is purposely non-human, as if it had been put together in a laboratory.”

“These days I seldom have subjects that lead nowhere because one thing experience has taught me is that enthusiasm will not make a piece. Only the existence of a problem will. I discovered this years ago when I was movie critic for a monthly, so that I might see thirty or forty movies in a month and have to pick one or two to write about. The ones that made good subjects were the ones I couldn’t resolve emotionally or intellectually after leaving the theater. If there was a problem I would have to work it out on paper, and that made for the sinew of the piece. The same logic applies pretty much to all writing, it seems to me.”

On money...

“I believe that to have a thriving arts community, the thing you need is cheap housing above all. And it’s not just that housing is expensive, but also you can no longer — if you’re young and broke, you won’t necessarily be able to live in the same neighborhood as your friends. And you need that physical proximity. You need to see everybody having breakfast together at the Ukrainian coffee shop, you know? It may happen again. It may not happen in New York. It might happen in Albany. It might happen in some weird place. You know, we’ll know. Like in 10 years we’ll suddenly wake up one day and find out that Wake Forest, North Carolina has been the center of everything for a while, and we just didn’t know about it.”

“Money, for me, may not immediately kill people in the way terrorism does, but it does certainly change the fabric of daily life in much deeper and more insidious ways. The terrorist may be defeated in 50 or 20 or 10 years, but money is going to be much harder to defeat.”

On New York history...

“New York in the sixties was a really amazing place. Because it blended together high and low, and at the same time, it was the Big City and it was kind of a village. One of the great things about those days is that almost everybody was listed in the phone book. I mean, you could look up Andy Warhol, Igor Stravinsky, they were in the phone book. “

“Oh, it’s playing on East 86th street. Well, we’ll be a little early, but I know like three bookstores we can hang out in. Those bookstores are all gone. Or place, just places to just hang, you know? Bookstores, record stores, junk shops, those places where you just go in and browse. Now the only way you can hang is by consuming something. I can go to museums, but it’s not the same. You know, I went to high school three blocks from the Metropolitan Museum. In those days it wasn’t even a suggested donation. You just walked in and it was empty most of the time. You could have a 19th century French painting to yourself for hours. There was nobody there. It was fantastic.”

“In every way, the ’80s were worse than the ’70s.”