Melissa Febos

Letting go of the cozy stories you've been carrying around is devastating. But there's more room for new stuff after you do…

— Melissa Febos

When you conceal inner reality, this pressure builds. You often don't expose yourself until it reaches extremity, a breaking point, and what…

— Melissa Febos

I can only see right in front of me when I'm writing, you know? I never think of it as raw or…

— Melissa Febos

“I have always been afraid to have children. I didn't want to give them the parts of me--the hurtling hunger, the shame--but…

— Melissa Febos

“There are still times when he and I fall into our respective labyrinths. I no longer believe that anyone but ourselves can…

— Melissa Febos

I think we all are born inside of our parents' narratives. We stay there for a good while. We are taught their…

— Melissa Febos

“Maybe that's all bravery is: when your hunger is greater than your fear. I resist the implication that bravery is noble. I…

— Melissa Febos

“I have always enjoyed watching women dress. The appeal isn't sexual. Most girls' first glimpse of private female life is watching their…

— Melissa Febos

“It was the first time anyone had broken up with me. It was a thing I had successfully avoided for thirty-two years.”

— Melissa Febos

I can still discern people's weaknesses, but it doesn't make me want to exploit them; it makes me want to hug them.

— Melissa Febos

“There is a moment in your 20s when you know what it means to love rightly, but not how to do it,…

— Melissa Febos

“The labyrinth, after all, is Sarah's creation. She calls upon the Goblin King. And this is the biggest difference between my brother's…

— Melissa Febos

“I want to tell her that darkness is not bad. It is only the place we can't see yet.”

— Melissa Febos

I made a conscious decision when I was writing that book to depict in real time how I treated it, and how…

— Melissa Febos

“I only wanted to know where I ended and everything else began, and I still do, in these oceanic days.”

— Melissa Febos

“It’s the oldest lesson. The first lesson. It's like the first noble truth of Buddhism - there's going to be suffering, and…

— Melissa Febos

Our lives are a long series of acquiring and then sloughing narratives.

— Melissa Febos

It has been my experience that the people I judge most harshly are the ones in whom I recognize some part of…

— Melissa Febos

Early in my career as a domme, I both admired and feared becoming one of those career dommes. I saw, in myself,…

— Melissa Febos

You don't have to write like David Foster Wallace or James Baldwin or Maggie Nelson - indeed, you shouldn't. Those writers are…

— Melissa Febos

I have replaced my instinct for secrecy with an instinct for confession.

— Melissa Febos

“Our favorite stories can be like lovers. Make sense to me, we ask them. Make sense of me. Here, fix these hurting…

— Melissa Febos

“I'm not brave, I tell her. Just curious.”

— Melissa Febos

Fiction stymies me with its possibility. I can't see the bottom and I freeze, cling to the side, or just choke. In…

— Melissa Febos

I didn't know enough as a writer to understand why I needed to do this, but I understood in a very gut…

— Melissa Febos