I was first interested... in the letters to and from the old lovers, significant and less so, the charcoal portraits, the photographs, and the diary entries detailing every fluctuation of those courtships. I pored over them so carefully that I couldn’t even glance at the mirror as I brushed my teeth at night, so gross the trespass. I justified my behavior by believing that a woman is the most interesting version of herself when she’s enraptured, but that’s not true. Romance is a closed circuit. Nothing makes a person less comprehensible to others than being in love.
—Catherine Lacey, Biography of X
