Kyle Thomas Hemingway: The ephemera edit

“I have many letters from Proust that I’ve never bothered to open…Anybody want them?”

“Paris is narcotic for a man alone, a never-ending labyrinth where the anxiety of freedom is relieved.”

“Nothing spoils a good party like a genius.”

“A few months into the run, the woman who gave me my massage on Fridays before the show said, ‘It’s the weirdest thing. You seem to be developing wing muscles.’ Because there were these ridges of muscle I’d developed alongside my spine where I flexed the wings, opening and closing them.”

“I have no idea what’s awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.”

“The queens took the lead in the Stonewall Riots. They walked around in semi-drag with teased hair and false eyelashes on and they didn’t give a shit what anybody thought about them. What did they have to lose? Absolutely fucking nothing.”

“Cole discovered that candy vendors sold more than sweets. They were also the purveyors of those spicy, naughty books that have always been the forbidden fruit of young people. Cole soon made a point of stocking up on these books.”

“In the way he dressed, fancy-dress parties and leopard-skin togas aside, Rex was markedly and increasingly conservative in comparison to his dandyish friends. Stephen might sprinkle his hair with gold dust, rouge his cheeks, smear Vaseline on his eyelids, paint his lips, don earrings and mist himself with scents from Worth and Molyneux, but for the most part (despite his brief flirtation with plus fours) Rex dressed ‘unostentatiously’ in corduroy trousers or well-cut suits.”

“The gleaming low white villa was set into the rocks behind it, as though it belonged there, and guests who glanced out of the windows or stepped onto the private balcony of their bedroom would get the impression that it was almost hanging over the blue sea. The swimming pool, considered the best on the Riviera, was housed in a basin blasted out of the rocks and featured a water-chute so that bathers could slide down into the sea below and swim to a raft tethered just offshore. The huge terrace between the house and the pool was the center for most of the entertainment, and at each end a curved stone staircase descended to the pool.”

“It would be a dull world if we all thought alike.”

“This is a characteristic image from the Bright Young People’s world: the thought of sorrowing in sunlight, good times gone, the myriad champagne corks bobbing away on a stream turned unexpectedly chill.”

“I figured the only way to make people love me was to be a million laughs.”