The voices / 24 fragments

Justina Chen

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Archive entries

01Undated

What would it be like to look in the mirror and actually accept what you see? Not loathe the reflection, or despise it, or be resigned to it? But to like it?

Justina Chen / quote

02Undated

When the creative impulse sweeps over you, grab it. You grab it and honor it and use it, because momentum is a rare gift.

Justina Chen / quote

03Undated

He knew me in all the ways that truly mattered: the shape of my fears, the contours of my dreams.

Justina Chen / quote

04Undated

If art made you think, then this was Art. Staring at the ball, made of layers and layers of cloth, I wondered about the glass marble at its heart. What if you wanted to reach that marble? Make sure it was still whole?You'd have to remove the layers. You'd have to risk breaking the ball for a chance at freeing it. Fear, knowledge, certainty - you'd have to be willing to let them all go.

Justina Chen / quote

05Undated

To dream is to starve doubt, feed hope.

Justina Chen / quote

06Undated

There must be a few times in life when you stand at a precipice of a decision. When you know there will forever be a Before and an After...I knew there would be no turning back if I designated this moment as my own Prime Meridian from which everything else would be measured.

Justina Chen / quote

07Undated

Flawed, we're truly interesting, truly memorable, and yes, truly beautiful.

Justina Chen / quote

08Undated

This is beautiful," I said, ignoring the shop window to trace the gleaming stone walls fronting another boutique."You know what's funny?" Jacob asked. He didn't wait for my answer. "You can see beauty in everything, except for yourself."***I swallowed hard. Erik thought my body was beautiful, Karin that it was enviable. At random times, people had noted that my hands were beautiful, or my hair. The Twisted Sisters had called my art beautiful. Mom had the best intentions and always told me before and after my laser surgeries that I would be beautiful. But no one had ever said that I was beautiful, all my parts taken together, not just the bits and pieces.

Justina Chen / quote

09Undated

I didn't know that the world could be so mind-blowingly beautiful.

Justina Chen / quote

10Undated

What swells inside me is a love so boundless, I am the sunrise and sunset. I am Liberty Bell in the Cascades. I am Beihai Lake. I am every beautiful, truly beautiful, thing I've ever seen, captured in my personal Geographia, the atlas of myself.

Justina Chen / quote

11Undated

I preferred my brand of beauty where Norah was more beautiful than any bimbette, and Mom was beautiful whether sized extra-small or extra-large. Where Peony could look at herself in the mirror and murmur, wow, look at me. Just look at me.

Justina Chen / quote

12Undated

From her dubious tone alone, I could see how Karin had no idea how terrifying words spoken quietly could be. How words chosen precisely to wreak maximum damage ticked like a bomb in your head, but exploded in your heart hours later, leaving you scarred and changed.

Justina Chen / quote

13Undated

My confidence was of the hothouse variety, carefully cultivated under highly regulated conditions. One wrong look, one mean comment, and my facade would wither.

Justina Chen / quote

14Undated

Silence, too, can be torture.

Justina Chen / quote

15Undated

Hey, if it's a good philosophy, it works. Death is imminent. Live every day like it's your last.

Justina Chen / quote

16Undated

Jacob: "Let her stare."Terra: "What?"Jacob: "Yeah most of the starers are just curious. Smile back. That's what I used to do.

Justina Chen / quote

17Undated

Progress is hard on history.

Justina Chen / quote

18Undated

I wondered about her chicken-and-egg relationship with Dad. Which came first? Her helplessness or his controlling?

Justina Chen / quote

19Undated

Getting lost is just another way of saying 'going exploring.

Justina Chen / quote

20Undated

North-ish." A pause, and then: "Is that Terra for I'm lost-ish?

Justina Chen / quote

21Undated

how many times had I begged Mom to divorce him already?

Justina Chen / quote

22Undated

Safe, I decided, didn't leave much room for fun.

Justina Chen / quote

23Undated

So, really," continued Jacob as if this were perfectly normal to expound on art in these circumstances, "when you think about it, the artists who make people stop and think, who push the form, who make you uncomfortable, who are laughable, well, they're the ones who get remembered." Idly, Jacob dug a hole in the snow with his shovel and then another one next to it. "So why wouldn't you want to join the ranks of the ridiculed?

Justina Chen / quote

24Undated

The pressure of his touch through my jacket and my sweater was more assurance than any promise ever made to me. It was a touch that said, I have your back and I am here for you. If a girl wasn't careful, she could fall in love with a touch like that.

Justina Chen / quote