Once she was standing by her locker and her pupa shells broke and scattered, and she made a joke about it, but he could tell she was upset. He wanted to buy her some more. He wanted to give her a million strands of little nesting polished shells, and tropical flowers and ice creams and lemonades and a pale blue surfboard to teach her to surf on and anything else she wanted. Instead, he let his checkered Vans step on one of the rolling shells and crush it.

— Francesca Lia Block

People worry so much. Just enjoy your body. That you can love. And you're alive.

— Francesca Lia Block

Pianos, unlike people, sing when you give them your every growl. They know how to dive into the pit of your stomach and harmonize with your roars when you’ve split yourself open. And when they see you, guts shining, brain pulsing, heart right there exposed in a rhythm that beats need, need, need, pianos do not run. And so she plays.

— Francesca Lia Block

She wasn’t crying at all. This was what scared him the most. Where had she locked up the things he’d seen her feeling that day when she heard? She wasn’t that big a girl to hold all of it—to hold her brother’s life and his death inside of her. To hold all his long-lived raging tidal motion and all the loss of that.

— Francesca Lia Block

Sometimes I wanted to peel away all of my skin and find a different me underneath.

— Francesca Lia Block

Sometimes she has imagined what it would be like to fly, to live in the river, to run like a horse. She has dreamed of that freedom, that power, and fears the wildness in herself that wants to live as beasts live, moved purely by need and desire. She has felt torn between the heat of her limbs and the thoughts in her mind telling her to be careful and good and always calm

— Francesca Lia Block

Sometimes she wore Levi's with white-suede fringe sewn down the legs and a feathered Indian headdress, sometimes old fifties' taffeta dresses covered with poetry written in glitter, or dresses made of kids' sheets printed with pink piglets or Disney characters.

— Francesca Lia Block

Stories are like genies... They can carry us into and though our sorrows. Sometimes they burn, sometimes they dance, sometimes they weep, sometimes they sing. Like genies, everyone has one. Like genies, sometimes we forget that we do. Our stories can set us free... When we set them free.

— Francesca Lia Block

Sweetie could not even cry and make Kleenex roses. She remembered the day her father, Charlie, had driven away in the smashed yellow T-bird, leaving her mother Brandy-Lynn clutching her flowered robe with one hand and an empty glass in the other, and leaving Sweetie holding her arms crossed over her chest that was taking its time to developed into anything

— Francesca Lia Block

Sweetie could see him--it was a man, a little man in a turban, with a jewel in his nose, harem pants, and curly-toed slippers. "Lanky Lizards!" Sweetie exclaimed." Greetings," said the man in an odd voice, a rich, dark purr." Oh, shit!" Sweetie said." I beg your pardon? Is that your wish?

— Francesca Lia Block