I will go to campus alone dressed in antique silk slips and beat-up cowboy boots and gypsy beads, and I will study poetry. I will sit on the edge of the fountain in the plaza and write.

— Francesca Lia Block

I wrote poetry from the time I could write. That was the only way I could begin to express who I was, but the poems didn't make sense to my teachers. They didn't rhyme. They were about the wind sounds, the planets' motions, never about who I was or how I felt. I didn't think I felt anything. I was this mind more than a body or a heart. My mind photographing the stars, hearing the wind.

— Francesca Lia Block

L.A. kills people.' Jacaranda said. 'You're lucky you're leaving. You'll be able to write.' She looked paler, going through another depression, smoking in bed in her lilac room. The walls were the color of her veins. She was getting too thin, even for the modeling. . . Jacaranda died last winter when the flowering trees were bare. You couldn't even tell which ones once cried the purple blossoms she named herself after.

— Francesca Lia Block

Lex surfed wicked, like the devil. He wasn’t afraid of anything, seemed like. He grinned at West as the waves came up toward them like towers of green glass, an emerald city. We’re off to see the wizard, he shouted. He whooped. His body crouched ready to fly. He shone against the sun.

— Francesca Lia Block

Life was small but good. (15)

— Francesca Lia Block

Magic can be found in stolen moments.

— Francesca Lia Block

Maybe I would become a mermaid... I would live in the swirling blue-green currents, doing exotic underwater dances for the fish, kissed by sea anemones, caressed by seaweed shawls. I would have a dolphin friend. He would have merry eyes and thick flesh of a god. My fingernails would be tiny shells and my skin would be like jade with light shining through it, I would never have to come back up

— Francesca Lia Block

My mother says that pain is hidden in everyone you see. She says try to imagine it like big bunches of flowers that everyone is carrying around with them. Think of your pain like a big bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.

— Francesca Lia Block

My reading and studying and retelling of old stories didn't do anything except help me think better. I was at least thoughtful. Too thoughtful, my friends said. And all I thought about was myths and old paintings that made me feel drunk on wine or struck my lightning but didn't matter to most people.

— Francesca Lia Block

Nightingale"Did I wound you, mutilate. Take away your voice. Did I cut something from you? Leave you locked in silence? This is what you do: you sing. Every part of you. Your locks of hair sing, your eyes, your hands, your smile. If I listen closely I can even hear your blood. Was I the one that took that away? Go down to the water where we used to swim. Stand under the sky at dawn when the sky is streaked with blood. Open your mouth and shout our secret to the waves. The ocean will be your voice. You won't have to carry anything alone. Little Sister, my Spring, April. Little nightingale. San tat the edge of the water. Your voice will come back to you. Maybe. If I am silent.

— Francesca Lia Block