“For Smith, poet and painter William Blake exemplified this approach to life. She remarked: ‘Despite the fact he had no proof from the world he was worth anything—he would have gotten 4 likes [on Instagram]—he did his work.’”
“But you put me here in America— in rich, white, suburban America, where the people are bland and the food even more so. You put me here in this diner, and I hate you for it.”
“Looking back, I feel the peculiar embarrassment of having been a teenage girl with teenage girl concerns, but the lives and concerns of teenage girls are often dismissed as trivial things, and if I could tell myself at 13 what I know now, I would.”
