Earrings For Girls Quotes

He saw things in a way that others did not, so that a city I had lived in all my life seemed a different place, so that a woman became beautiful with the light on her face.

You're so calm and quiet, you never say. But there are things inside you. I see them sometimes, hiding in your eyes.

What is a Dark-Hunter? Is it like the Vampire Slayer? (Amanda) Yes, I'm a small, emaciated teenage girl who struts around fighting vampires in earrings they would rip out of my ears and shove up my ass. (Kyrian)

Yes, well, life is a folly. If you live long enough, nothing is surprising.

It's a good thing you and your pills weren't around a few hundred years ago or there never would have been a Vermeer or a Caravaggio. You'd have drugged "Girl with a Pearl Earring" and "The Taking of Christ" right the hell out of them.

I had walked along that street all my life, but had never been so aware that my back was to my home

Yes, I'm a small, emaciated teenage girl who struts around fighting vampires in earrings they would rip out of my ears and shove up my —

I wanted to wear the mantle and the pearls. I wanted to know the man who painted her like that.

He spoke her name as though he held cinnamon in his mouth.

I heard voices outside our front door - a woman's, bright as polished brass, and a man's, low and dark like the wood of the table I was working on. They were the kind of voices we heard rarely in our house. I could hear rich carpets in their voices, books and pearls and fur.

I could not think of anything but his fingers on my neck, his thumb on my lips.

It was not a house where secrets could be kept easily.

I did not mind the cold so much when he was there.

He had decided to trust me.

At first I could not meet his eyes. When I did it was like sitting close to a fire that suddenly blazes up.

You know I don’t listen to market gossip,” she began, “but it is hard not to hear it when my daughter’s name is mentioned.

There followed a time when everything was dull. The things that had meant something lost importance, though they were still there, like bruises on the body that fade to hard lumps under the skin.

My father was often impatient during March, waiting for winter to end, the cold to ease, the sun to reappear. March was an unpredictable month, when it was never clear what might happen. Warm days raised hopes until ice and grey skies shut over the town again.

Pieter would be pleased with the rest of the coins, the debt now settled. I would not have cost him anything. A maid came free.

Gray, I could cover your face in shit and make you wear tampons for earrings and you still would be the hottest girl in the bar. Besides me, of course." "So why am I getting all dressed up? Where's the shit and tampons?

Lick your lips, Griet." I licked my lips. "Leave your mouth open." I was so surprised by this request that my mouth remained open of its own will. I blinked back tears. Virtuous women did not open their mouths in paintings.

I slowed my pace. Years of hauling water, wringing out clothes, scrubbing floors, emptying chamber pots, with no chance of beauty or color or light in my life, stretched before me like a landscape of flat land where, a long way off, the sea is visible but can never be reached.

What is a Dark-Hunter?" she asked. "Is it like Buffy the Vampire Slayer?" He laughed at that. "Yes, I'm a small, emaciated teenage girl who struts around fighting vampires in earrings they would rip out of my ears and shove up my-

I knew that he would go out to the tavern, returning with eyes like glittering spoons.

I felt as if my parents had pushed me into the street, that a deal had been made and I was being passed into the hands of a man. At least he is a good man, I thought, even if his hands are not as clean as they could be.

When I left the room, Maria Thins was still standing in front of the painting.

There is a difference between Catholic and Protestant attitudes to painting," he explained as he worked, "but it is not necessarily as great as you may think. Paintings may serve a spiritual purpose for Catholics, but remember too that Protestants see God everywhere, in everything. By painting everyday things-tables and chairs, bowls and pitchers, soldiers and maids-are they not celebrating God's creation as well?

I took my mental Big Girl Socks off and threw them on the floor. Fuck this motherfucker. If I would have had earrings on, I’d be taking those off and handing them to Harlow, too.

But the problem with battling yourself is that even if you win, you lose. At some point – scarred and exhausted – you either accept that you must become a woman – that you are a woman – or you die. This is the brutal, root truth of adolescence – that it is often a long, painful campaign of attrition. Those self-harming girls, with the latticework of razor cuts on their arms and thighs, are just reminding themselves that their body is a battlefield. If you don’t have the stomach for razors, a tattoo will do, or even just the lightning snap of the earring gun in Claire’s Accessories. There. There you are. You have just dropped a marker pin on your body, to reclaim yourself, to remind you where you are: inside yourself. Somewhere. Somewhere in there.

I believe I met a girl in the rain, who had lost her mother's earrings. And I killed her. Now I stand here in a time I know nothing about. I watched the death of kings far greater than any man living now. And I am still here.

When I first entered the school, I was all set to tie my hair in a ponytail, get a fake tan, and write my homework in pink gel ink. I was prepared to hear girls bragging nonchalantly about the BMWs and diamond earrings they recieved for their birthday. I almost looked forward to hearing the flashlight-wielding nuns tell me to "leave room for the holy ghost" when I danced lewedly with messy-haired prep-school boys

A budding fashionista even at four, I would capture the little lizards and latch them, still living, onto my earlobes as earrings. Most girls wouldn't touch them, I thought they completed the outfit.

Yalnızca hırsızlar ve çocuklar koşar.

Sólo los ladrones y los niños corren.

نپرسیدم تا چه حد برای گرفتن این اطلاعات خودش را به خطر انداخته. زیر لب گفتم، « متشکرم پیتر. » برای نخستین بار بود که نامش را بر زبان آورده بودم. به چشمانش نگریستم و مهربانی را در آن ها دیدم. در عین حال چیزی را تشخیص دادم که از آن وحشت داشتم – توقع.

It seemed to me that the baker had an honest response to the painting. Van Ruijven tried too hard when he looked at paintings, with his honeyed words and studied expressions. He was too aware of having an audience to perform for, whereas the baker merely said what he thought.

Every eighth-grade girl is rare and precious. Every eighth-grade girl is a treasure, like a priceless work of art, so you’d like to think that every eighth-grade teacher will be like a security guard in an art gallery. He’s not there to enjoy the beauty; he’s there to protect it. He’s there to enforce the rules, and Rule Number One is: DO. NOT. TOUCH. Keep your fingers, lips, and man bits off the masterpieces. It should be obvious that the Girl with a Pearl Earring deserves a chance to smile her wistful smile without some creepy guy feeling her up. Because damage to that precious work of art can be hidden, but it can never be undone.

Evet,yaşam bir aldatmaca. Eğer yeteri kadar uzun yaşarsan, hiç bir şeyin şaşırtıcı olmadığını öğreniyorsun.

I had not thought I would learn something from a maid,” he said at last.

Años de acarrear el agua, retorcer la colada, fregar los suelos, vaciar los orinales, sin que la belleza o el color o la luz entraran en mi vida, se extendían ante mí como una paisaje llano en el que se divisa el mar a lo lejos, pero nunca puedes alcanzarlo. Si no podía trabajar fabricando los colores, si no podía estar cerca de él, no sabía cómo iba a poder seguir trabajando en aquella casa.

It should be obvious that the Girl with a Pearl Earring deserves a chance to smile her wistful smile without some creepy guy feeling her up. Because damage to that precious work of art can be hidden, but it can never be undone. My

Paintings may serve a spiritual purpose for Catholics, but remember too that Protestants see God everywhere, in everything. By painting everyday things—tables and chairs, bowls and pitchers, soldiers and maids—are they not celebrating God’s creation as well?” I

The smell of coffee, white dust, tobacco and burnt bread, flowers with a fragrance of wine, and the crimson fruit, soft and overripe. A girl looking over her bare shoulder, with a flash of a smile, gold ear-rings showing from thick black hair brushed away from her face, long arms, a cigarette between her lips. Night like a great dark blanket, voices murmuring at a street corner, the air warm with tired flowers, and a hum from the sea.

I was always ashamed afterwards that I had turned my back on my own sister.

You have ruined me, I thought. I licked my lips again

But you – no, there’s all manner of things you think but don’t say. I wonder what they are?

the runway style. With her short hair freshly died platinum blonde she had to slay the scene in a black Crooks and Castle snapback, diamond stud earrings, gold collar necklace, red Crooks and Castle sweatshirt, Cartier gold men’s watch, black leather leggings, Saint Laurent suede peep-toe lace-up booties and a extra sickening red $7750 VBH Brera ostrich satchel bag.

George Burns tells a wonderful story about the one time in his life (so he says) he cheated on his beloved Gracie. He was so disgusted and ashamed of himself that he went out and bought her the most beautiful diamond necklace he could find. Gracie was pretty sure she knew what was wrong, but she accepted the necklace and said nothing. Several years passed. One night, she and George were out to dinner and an acquaintance complimented her on her lovely necklace. As George stood there, aghast, she replied, 'Thank you. I wish George would cheat on me again so I could get the matching earrings.

BREAVMAN KNOWS a girl named Shell whose ears were pierced so she could wear the long filigree earrings. The punctures festered and now she has a tiny scar in each earlobe. He discovered them behind her hair.

I was chopping vegetables in the kitchen when I heard voices outside our front door – a woman’s, bright as polished brass, and a man’s, low and dark like the wood of the table I was working on. They were the kind of voices we heard rarely in our house. I could hear rich carpets in their voices, books and pearls and fur.

A glittery girl. Older than Jane but definitely still glittery. All her life Jane had watched girls like that with scientific interest. Maybe a little awe. Maybe a little envy. They weren’t necessarily the prettiest, but they decorated themselves so affectionately, like Christmas trees, with dangling earrings, jangling bangles and delicate, pointless scarves. They

Once in a while dancing is immaculate, a perfection: you understand why raves exist: when you’ve timed the drinks correctly and they lift your mood and your energy, the songs are ones you all know, and you look around at the girls, their happy lost faces, their beautiful bare stomachs, their jangly long earrings, something limbic, their skin just damp with sweat to the touch, the whole thing…

There is a difference between Catholic and Protestant attitudes to painting,’ he explained as he worked, ‘but it is not necessarily as great as you may think. Paintings may serve a spiritual purpose for Catholics, but remember too that Protestants see God everywhere, in everything. By painting everyday things – tables and chairs, bowls and pitchers, soldiers and maids – are they not celebrating God’s creation as well?

I saw it in the girls, in their loud laughter, in their gilded bamboo earrings that announced their names thrice over. And I saw it in their brutal language and hard gaze, how they would cut you with their eyes and destroy you with their words for the sin of playing too much. “Keep my name out your mouth,” they would say. I would watch them after school, how they squared off like boxers, vaselined up, earrings off, Reeboks on, and leaped at each other.

I liked sleeping in the attic. There was no Crucifixion scene hanging at the foot of the bed to trouble me. There were no paintings at all, but the clean scent of linseed oil and the musk of the earth pigments. I liked my view of the New Church, and the quiet. No one came up except him. The girls did not visit me as they sometimes had in the cellar, or secretly search through my things. i felt alone there, perched high above the noisy household, able to see it from a distance.

I leaned agains the warm brick wall and gazed up. It was a bright, cloudless day, the sky a mocking blue. It was the kind of day when children ran up and down the streets and shouted, when couples walked out through the town gates, past the windmills and along the canals, when old women sat in the sun and closed their eyes. My father was probably sitting on the bench in front of the house, his face turned towards the warmth. Tomorrow night might be bitterly cold, but today it was spring.

Я хотіла знати, хоча доки не знала, могла сподіватися.

As I turned to go I caught the glance that passed between father and son. Even then I knew somehow what it meant, and what it would mean for me.

bee’s knees, the duck’s nuts, the cat’s pajamas, the dolphin’s earrings.

Project Princess Teeny feet rock layered double socks Popping side piping of many colored loose lace ups Racing toe keeps up with fancy free gear slick slide and just pressed recently weaved hair Jeans oversized belie her hips, back, thighs that have made guys sigh for milleni year Topped by an attractive jacket her suit’s not for flacking, flunkies, junkies or punk homies on the stroll. Her hands mobile thrones of today’s urban goddess Clinking rings link dragon fingers no need to be modest. One or two gap teeth coolin’ sport gold initials Doubt you get to her name just check from the side please chill. Multidimensional shrimp earrings frame her cinnamon face Crimson with a compliment if a comment hits the right place Don’t step to the plate with datelines from ‘88 Spare your simple, fragile feelings with the same sense that you came Color woman variation reworks the french twist with crinkle cut platinum frosted bangs from a spray can’s mist Never dissed, she insists: “No you can’t touch this.” And, if pissed, bedecked fists stop boys who must persist. She’s the one. Give her some. Under fire. Smoking gun. Of which songs are sung, raps are spun, bells are rung, rocked, pistols cocked, unwanted advances blocked, well stacked she’s jock. It’s all about you girl. You go on. Don’t you dare stop.

I had not yet been down to the cellar where I was to sleep. I took a candle with me but was too tired to look around beyond finding a bed, pillow and blanket. Leaving the trap door of the cellar open so that cool, fresh air could reach me, I took off my shoes, cap, apron and dress, prayed briefly, and lay down. I was about to blow out the candle when I noticed the painting hanging at the foot of my bed. I sat up, wide awake now. It was another picture of Christ on the Cross, smaller than the one upstairs but even more disturbing. Christ had thrown his head back in pain, and Mary Magdalene’s eyes were rolling. I Iay back gingerly, unable to take my eyes off it. I could not imagine sleeping in the room with the painting. I wanted to take it down but did not dare. Finally I blew out the candle—I could not afford to waste candles on my first day in the new house. I lay back again, my eyes fixed to the place where I knew the painting hung. I slept badly that night, tired as I was. I woke often and looked for the painting. Though I could see nothing on the wall, every detail was fixed in my mind. Finally, when it was beginning to grow light, the painting appeared again and I was sure the Virgin Mary was looking down at me.

The naked body of the female consort illustrates freedom from the obscuration of conceptual symbols. As an illustration of unchanging great bliss endowed with the sixteen joys, she appears in the form of a youthful, sixteen-year-old girl. Her hair hangs loose, showing the unlimited way that wisdom expands impartially out of basic space. She is adorned with five bone ornaments. Of these, the ring at the top of her head symbolizes the wisdom of the basic space of phenomena [dharmadhātu], while her bone necklace represents the wisdom of equality. Her earrings stand for discerning wisdom, her bracelets for mirrorlike wisdom, and her belt for all-accomplishing wisdom. Illustrating the unity of calm abiding and insight, her secret space is joined in union.

example of one of the big differences between Kristy and me. I was wearing a very short pink cotton dress, white tights, and black ballet slippers. I had swept all of my hair way over to one side, where it was held in place with a piece of pink cloth that matched the dress. Only one ear showed, and in it I had put my big palm tree earring. (Kristy was not wearing any jewelry.)

Their eyes, warm not only with human bond but with the shared enjoyment of the art objects he sold, their mutual tastes and satisfactions, remained fixed on him; they were thanking him for having things like these for them to see, pick up and examine, handle perhaps without even buying. Yes, he thought, they know what sort of store they are in; this is not tourist trash, not redwood plaques reading Muir Woods, Marin County, PSA, or funny signs or girly rings or postcards or views of the Bridge. The girl’s eyes especially, large, dark. How easily, Childan thought, I could fall in love with a girl like this. How tragic my life, then; as if it weren’t bad enough already. The stylish black hair, lacquered nails, pierced ears for the long dangling brass handmade earrings. “Your

Well, this girl, this Ashford or whatever her name was, looked like a hippie. She was wearing a very pretty pink flowered skirt that was full and so long, it touched the tops of her shoes, which I soon realized were not shoes, but sort of hiking boots. Her blouse, loose and lacy, was embroidered with pink flowers, and both her wrists were loaded with silver bangle bracelets. Her hair, which was almost as long as my friend Dawn's and was dirty blonde, was pulled into a big fat braid (which I might add, was not held in place with a rubber band or anything; it sort of trailed to an end). But the amazing thing was that because of her hair was pulled back, you could see her ears and she had three pierced earrings in each ear. They were all silver and all dangly, but none matched.

If she’d known what a good shot you are,” he whispered past the unfamiliar tightness in his throat, “she’d never have dared.” His hand lifted to her wet cheek, holding it pressed against his chest. “You could always call her out, you know.” The spasmodic shaking in Elizabeth’s slender shoulders began to subside, and Ian added with forced tightness, “Better yet, Robert should stand in for you. He’s not as fine a shot as you are, but he’s a hell of a lot faster…” A teary giggle escaped the girl in his arms, and Ian continued, “On the other hand, if you’re holding the pistol, you’ll have some choices to make, and they’re not easy…” When he didn’t say more, Elizabeth drew a shaky breath. “What choices?” she finally whispered against his chest after a moment. “What to shoot, for one thing,” he joked, stroking her back. “Robert was wearing Hessians, so I had a tassel for a target. I suppose, though, you could always shoot the bow off Valerie’s gown.” Elizabeth’s shoulders gave a lurch, and a choked laugh escaped her. Overwhelmed with relief, Ian kept his left arm around her and gently took her chin between his forefinger and thumb, tipping her face up to his. Her magnificent eyes were still wet with tears, but a smile was trembling on her rosy lips. Teasingly, he continued, “A bow isn’t much of a challenge for an expert marksman like you. I suppose you could insist that she hold up an earring between her fingers so you could shoot that instead.” The image was so absurd that Elizabeth chuckled. Without being conscious of what he was doing, Ian moved his thumb from her chin to her lower lip, rubbing lightly against its inviting fullness. He finally realized what he was doing and stopped. Elizabeth saw his jaw tighten. She drew a shuddering breath, sensing he’d been on the verge of kissing her, and had just decided not to do it. After the last shattering minutes, Elizabeth no longer knew who was friend or foe, she only knew she’d felt safe and secure in his arms, and at that moment his arms were already beginning to loosen, and his expression was turning aloof. Not certain what she was going to say or even what she wanted, she whispered a single, shaky word, filled with confusion and a plea for understanding, her green eyes searching his: “Please-“ Ian realized what she was asking for, but he responded with a questioning lift of his brows. “I-“ she began, uncomfortably aware of the knowing look in his eyes. “Yes?” he prompted. “I don’t know-exactly,” she admitted. All she knew for certain was that, for just a few minutes more, she would have liked to be in his arms. “Elizabeth, if you want to be kissed, all you have to do is put your lips on mine.” “What!” “You heard me.” “Of all the arrogant-“ He shook his head in mild rebuke. “Spare me the maidenly protests. If you’re suddenly as curious as I am to find out if it was as good between us as it now seems in retrospect, then say so.” His own suggestion startled Ian, although having made it, he saw no great harm in exchanging a few kisses if that was what she wanted.

Melissa turned back to the mirror and drew a breath; the girl she knew was gone. In her place was a woman in rustling green silk and emeralds, a woman who would turn heads at the ball. From the top of her powdered head to the soles of her silk shod feet, she was elegantly dressed and more than ready to attend the ball. The earrings fell from her ears in waterfalls of tiny emeralds and her necklace was a heavy engraved affair of gold, the emeralds in the scrolled settings large and dazzling. Green suited her it seemed.

At first people were laughing ‘cause they thought I was just playin’. Then I pull my hair off, I took my shoes off, I took my earrings off, I bawled up my fists all furious and I started praying in the microphone: “Heavenly Father give me the strength and power to beat this girl down to the ground and teach her she ain’t never supposed to be disrespectful to anybody because I give zero fucks Lord, just give me the power to whip her ass. All these things I ask in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen”. I guess it was the way I said it because people stopped laughing.

When I say to you that what happened to those girls was the greatest hurt of my life, I am speaking the God’s honest truth. To understand that statement, you have to understand where I came from. When I was growing up Daddy had a good practice, and it afforded us some things. We owned our own house, took vacations. I got my hair done in a real beauty shop, not somebody’s kitchen. Our little family managed to live dignified in undignified times. Daddy shined his shoes every morning. Mama wore earrings. These little acts might seem simple to you, but baby, let me tell you. They held back the storm.

A bunch of Latinas at Pitzer College decided to let white girls know that they shouldn’t wear hoops anymore, because that’s appropriating a style.... I’ve never worn hoop earrings for the purpose of “feeling ethnic,” nor have I ever associated hoop earrings with a certain culture. They’ve always been an accessory I like. It’s really as simple as that....I can’t wear hoops because I didn’t “create the culture as a coping mechanism for marginalization”? I can’t wear hoops because I’m not a feminist? I can’t wear hoops because some Latinas can’t afford it? I can’t wear hoops because I refuse to buy into your hypersensitive BS?....Does anyone else realize how completely ridiculous that sounds?

Perhaps a necklace of tears to weep so that she won't have to? A pin of teeth to bite annoying husbands? No.' He continues to walk through the small space. He lifts a ring. 'To bring on a child?' And then, seeing my face, lifts a pair of earrings, one in the shape of a crescent moon and the other in the shape of a star. 'Ah, yes. Here. This is what you want.' 'What do they do?' I ask. He laughs. 'They are beautiful- isn't that enough?' I give him a skeptical look. 'It would be enough, considering how exquisite they are, but I bet it isn't all.' He enjoys that. 'Clever girl. They are not only beautiful, but they add to beauty. They make someone more lovely than they were, painfully lovely. Her husband will not leave her side for quite some time.' The look on his face is a challenge. He believes I am too vain to give such a gift to my sister. How well he knows the selfish human heart. Taryn will be a beautiful bride. How much more do I, her twin, want to put myself in her shadow? How lovely can I bear her to be? And yet, what better gift for a human girl wedded to the beauty of the Folk? 'What would you take for them?' I ask. 'Oh, any number of little things. A year of your life. The luster of your hair. The sound of your laugh.' 'My laugh is not such a sweet sound as all that.' 'Not sweet, but I bet it's rare,' he says, and I wonder at his knowing that. 'What about my tears?' I ask. 'You could make another necklace.' He looks at me, as though evaluating how often I weep. 'I will take a single tear,' he says finally. 'And you will take an offer to the High King for me.

He's often wished that he could capture the full essence of each woman's laugh on canvas, but he settles instead, on watching how, when a woman chuckles, her head moves slightly to the left or right so that the light grazes it at a new angle and creates a new pattern of highlight and shadow. It's this subtle shifting that he finds astounding - how everything and nothing can be written on a face through its lines, through the way skin around the eyes crinkle or how the shifting of a mouth belies joy or sarcasm or simple placation. He wonders what Vermeer might have said to that girl with the pearl earring, what words could have stirred in her that wanton expression, because even amateurs understand that faces allow an entry point and that negative space is the key to any good painting: what isn't included is sometimes more important than what is.

Jessica lived on Tremont Avenue, on one of the poorer blocks in a very poor section of the Bronx. She dressed even to go to the store. Chance was opportunity in the ghetto, and you had to be prepared for anything. She didn’t have much of a wardrobe, but she was resourceful with what she had—her sister’s Lee jeans, her best friend’s earrings, her mother’s T-shirts and perfume. Her appearance on the streets in her neighborhood usually caused a stir. A sixteen-year-old Puerto Rican girl with bright hazel eyes, a huge, inviting smile, and a voluptuous shape, she radiated intimacy wherever she went. You could be talking to her in the middle of the bustle of Tremont and feel as if lovers’ confidences were being exchanged beneath a tent of sheets. Guys in cars offered rides. Grown men got stupid. Women pursed their lips. Boys made promises they could not keep.

Melinda Pratt rides city bus number twelve to her cello lesson, wearing her mother's jean jacket and only one sock. Hallo, world, says Minna. Minna often addresses the world, sometimes silently, sometimes out loud. Bus number twelve is her favorite place for watching, inside and out. The bus passes cars and bicycles and people walking dogs. It passes store windows, and every so often Minna sees her face reflection, two dark eyes in a face as pale as a winter dawn. There are fourteen people on the bus today. Minna stands up to count them. She likes to count people, telephone poles, hats, umbrellas, and, lately, earrings. One girl, sitting directly in front of Minna, has seven earrings, five in one ear. She has wisps of dyed green hair that lie like forsythia buds against her neck. There are, Minna knows, a king, a past president of the United States, and a beauty queen on the bus. Minna can tell by looking. The king yawns and scratches his ear with his little finger. Scratches, not picks. The beauty queen sleeps, her mouth open, her hair the color of tomatoes not yet ripe. The past preside of the United States reads Teen Love and Body Builder's Annual. Next to Minna, leaning against the seat, is her cello in its zippered canvas case. Next to her cello is her younger brother, McGrew, who is humming. McGrew always hums. Sometimes he hums sentences, though most often it comes out like singing. McGrew's teachers do not enjoy McGrew answering questions in hums or song. Neither does the school principal, Mr. Ripley. McGrew spends lots of time sitting on the bench outside Mr. Ripley's office, humming. Today McGrew is humming the newspaper. First the headlines, then the sports section, then the comics. McGrew only laughs at the headlines. Minna smiles at her brother. He is small and stocky and compact like a suitcase. Minna loves him. McGrew always tells the truth, even when he shouldn't. He is kind. And he lends Minna money from the coffee jar he keeps beneath his mattress. Minna looks out the bus window and thinks about her life. Her one life. She likes artichokes and blue fingernail polish and Mozart played too fast. She loves baseball, and the month of March because no one else much likes March, and every shade of brown she has ever seen. But this is only one life. Someday, she knows, she will have another life. A better one. McGrew knows this, too. McGrew is ten years old. He knows nearly everything. He knows, for instance, that his older sister, Minna Pratt, age eleven, is sitting patiently next to her cello waiting to be a woman.

The boys who have done you harm are surrounded by girls you will choose never to be. girls who are disgusting, who bleed and weep and wail. Girls who spend too much time in the bathroom. Girls who are never ready on time. Girls who titter, who are soft, who wear pretty clothes that are easily dirties, girls in hoop earrings and perfect wings of black eyeliner, girls who don't know what's cool. Girls who read the wrong books, twirl their hair around, are pursued, are hunted. You will remake yourself into something else: a boys' girl, a tough girl, a girl without needs or feelings, a girl who wisecracks and drinks whiskey in the backseat of cars, a girl cool as the first frost in winter, a girl so totally unlike other girls. If you cannot be loved and safe, you will be clever, mean, a girl as vicious as the serrated edge of a hunting knife. If you cannot be pretty, you will disdain beauty and its trappings. If you cannot be heard, you will be silent on purpose. You will find your knights again, a different set of boys, this time united against a common enemy: the softness and fragility of girls, of anything girlish within you, of anything girlish in any other girl. Against girls who are sad and silly and weeping (you don't cry), girls who complain (you protest nothing), girls who make demands (you never ask). This time, however, you will not be queen. Some of these boys will never even know your name.

Korie: Ray’s daughter, Rachel, and I were best friends, and they were going to Phil’s house for dinner one night. They invited me to go along. I still remembered Willie from camp, so needless to say, I was just dying to go. I begged my parents to let me go with them. They said yes! I even remember what I wore at Willie’s house-a black top with fluorescent green earrings. Don’t judge…it was the eighties. When Rachel and I got to the Robertsons’ house, the first thing Phil said to us was: “Have you met my boys, Jason Silas and Willie Jess? They’ll make good husbands someday. They’re good hunters and fisherman.” I was so nervous. I couldn’t believe this was happening. The other thing I remember about walking in their home was that Phil and Kay had a sign on the door that said, “Honeymoon in progress.” Phil and Kay have never been shy about their honeymooning…another thing that shocked me about their family. Once we had eaten, Willie took us back to his room, which was actually the laundry room. He made us laugh the whole time. He would stick his thumb in his mouth and pretend that he was blowing up his muscles. He did acupressure tricks and showed us our pressure points. This was all very impressive to a couple of fifth-grade girls. After a while, I decided I was going to try to really impress Korie. I started punching the tiles on the ceiling of the laundry room, which was a trick one of my buddies taught me. I’d rear back and just punch my fist through the ceiling and busted tile would fall over onto the floor. I’m sure she was really impressed.

I heard the fear in the first music I ever knew, the music that pumped from boom boxes full of grand boast and bluster. The boys who stood out on Garrison and Liberty up on Park Heights loved this music because it told them, against all evidence and odds, that they were masters of their own lives, their own streets, and their own bodies. I saw it in the girls, in their loud laughter, in their gilded bamboo earrings that announced their names thrice over. And I saw it in their brutal language and hard gaze, how they would cut you with their eyes and destroy you with their words for the sin of playing too much. “Keep my name out your mouth,” they would say. I would watch them after school, how they squared off like boxers, vaselined up, earrings off, Reeboks on, and leaped at each other. I felt the fear in the visits to my Nana’s home in Philadelphia. You never knew her. I barely knew her, but what I remember is her hard manner, her rough voice. And I knew that my father’s father was dead and that my uncle Oscar was dead and that my uncle David was dead and that each of these instances was unnatural. And I saw it in my own father, who loves you, who counsels you, who slipped me money to care for you. My father was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more anxiety than anger, my father who beat me as if someone might steal me away, because that is exactly what was happening all around us. Everyone had lost a child, somehow, to the streets, to jail, to drugs, to guns. It was said that these lost girls were sweet as honey and would not hurt a fly. It was said that these lost boys had just received a GED and had begun to turn their lives around. And now they were gone, and their legacy was a great fear. Have they told you this story? When your grandmother was sixteen years old a young man knocked on her door. The young man was your Nana Jo’s boyfriend. No one else was home. Ma allowed this young man to sit and wait until your Nana Jo returned. But your great-grandmother got there first. She asked the young man to leave. Then she beat your grandmother terrifically, one last time, so that she might remember how easily she could lose her body. Ma never forgot. I remember her clutching my small hand tightly as we crossed the street. She would tell me that if I ever let go and were killed by an onrushing car, she would beat me back to life. When I was six, Ma and Dad took me to a local park. I slipped from their gaze and found a playground. Your grandparents spent anxious minutes looking for me. When they found me, Dad did what every parent I knew would have done—he reached for his belt. I remember watching him in a kind of daze, awed at the distance between punishment and offense. Later, I would hear it in Dad’s voice—“Either I can beat him, or the police.” Maybe that saved me. Maybe it didn’t. All I know is, the violence rose from the fear like smoke from a fire, and I cannot say whether that violence, even administered in fear and love, sounded the alarm or choked us at the exit. What I know is that fathers who slammed their teenage boys for sass would then release them to streets where their boys employed, and were subject to, the same justice. And I knew mothers who belted their girls, but the belt could not save these girls from drug dealers twice their age. We, the children, employed our darkest humor to cope. We stood in the alley where we shot basketballs through hollowed crates and cracked jokes on the boy whose mother wore him out with a beating in front of his entire fifth-grade class. We sat on the number five bus, headed downtown, laughing at some girl whose mother was known to reach for anything—cable wires, extension cords, pots, pans. We were laughing, but I know that we were afraid of those who loved us most. Our parents resorted to the lash the way flagellants in the plague years resorted to the scourge.

So Dad was a tedious, well-connected workaholic. But the other thing you need to understand is that Mom was a living wet dream. A former Guess model and Miller Lite girl, she was tall, curvy and gorgeous. At thirty-eight, she had somehow managed to remain ageless and maintained her killer body. She’s five-foot-nine with never-ending legs, generous breasts and full hips that scoop dramatically into her slim waist. People who say Barbie’s proportions are unrealistic obviously never met my stepmother. Her face is pretty too, with long eyelashes, sculpted cheekbones and big, blue eyes that tease and smile at the same time. Her long brown hair rests on her shoulders in thick, tousled layers like in one of those Pantene Pro-V commercials. One memory seared in to my brain from my early teenage years is of Mom parading around the house one evening in nothing but her heels and underwear. I was sitting on the couch in the living room watching TV when a flurry of long limbs and blow-dried hair burst in front of the screen. “Teddy-bear. Do you know where Silvia left the dry cleaning? I’m running late for dinner with the Blackwells and I can’t find my red cocktail dress.” Mom stood before me in matching off-white, La Perla bra and panties and Manolo Blahnik stilettos. Some subtle gold hoop earrings hung from her ears and a tiny bit of mascara on her eye lashes highlighted her sparkling, blue eyes. Aside from the missing dress, she was otherwise ready to go. “I think she left them hanging on the chair next to the other sofa,” I said, trying my best not to gape at Mom’s perfect body. Mom trotted across the room, her heels tocking on the hard wood floor. I watched her slim, sexy back as she lifted the dry cleaning onto the sofa and then bent over to sort through the garments. My eyes followed her long mane of brown hair down to her heart-shaped ass. Her panties stretched tightly across each cheek as she bent further down. “Found it!” She cried, springing back upright, causing her 35Cs to bounce up and down from the sudden motion. They were thrusting proudly off her ribcage and bulging out over the fabric of the balconette bra like two titanic eggs. Her supple skin pushed out over the silk edges. And then she was gone as quickly as she had arrived, her long legs striding back down the hallway.

Montreal October 1704 Temperature 55 degrees Eben was looking at Sarah in the way every girl prays some boy will one day look at her. “I will marry you, Sarah,” said Eben. “I will be a good husband. A Puritan husband. Who will one day take us both back home.” Wind shifted the lace of Sarah’s gown and the auburn of one loose curl. “I love you, Sarah,” said Eben. “I’ve always loved you.” Tears came to Sarah’s eyes: she who had not wept over her own family. She stood as if it had not occurred to her that she could be loved; that an English boy could adore her. “Oh, Eben!” she whispered. “Oh, yes, oh, thank you, I will marry you. But will they let us, Eben? We will need permission.” “I’ll ask my father,” said Eben. “I’ll ask Father Meriel.” They were not touching. They were yearning to touch, they were leaning forward, but they were holding back. Because it is wrong? wondered Mercy. Or because they know they will never get permission? “My French family will put up a terrible fuss,” said Sarah anxiously. “Pierre might even summon his fellow officers and do something violent.” Eben grinned. “Not if I have Huron warriors behind me.” The Indians rather enjoyed being French allies one day and difficult neighbors the next. Lorette Indians might find this a fine way to stab a French soldier in the back without drawing blood. They would need Father Meriel. He could arrange anything if he chose; he had power among all the peoples. But he might say no, and so might Eben’s Indian family. Mercy translated what was going on for Nistenha and Snow Walker. “They want to get married,” she told them. “Isn’t it wonderful?” She couldn’t help laughing from the joy and the terror of it. Ransom would no longer be the first word in Sarah’s heart. Eben would be. Mercy said, “Eben asked her right here in the street, Snow Walker. He wants to save her from marriage to a French soldier she doesn’t want. He’s loved Sarah since the march.” The two Indians had no reaction. For a moment Mercy thought she must have spoken to them in English. Nistenha turned to walk away and Snow Walker turned with her. If Nistenha was not interested in Sarah and Eben’s plight, no Indian would be. Mercy called on her memory of every speech in every ceremony, every dignified phrase and powerful word. “Honored mother,” she said softly. “Honored sister. We are in need and we beg you to hear our petition.” Nistenha stopped walking, turned back and stared at her in amazement. Sarah and Eben and Snow Walker stared at her in amazement. Sam can build canoes, thought Mercy. I can make a speech. “This woman my sister and this man my brother wish to spend their lives together. My brother will need the generous permission of his Indian father. Already we know that my sister will be refused the permission of her French owners. We will need an ally to support us in our request. We will need your strength and your wisdom. We beseech you, Mother, that you stand by us and help us.” The city of Montreal swirled around them. Eben, property of an Indian father in Lorette; Sarah, property of a French family in Montreal; and Mercy, property of Tannhahorens, awaited her answer. “Your words fill me with pride, Munnunock,” said Nistenha softly. She reached into her shopping bundle. Slowly she drew out a fine French china cup, undoubtedly meant for the feast of Flying Legs. She held it for a moment, and then her stern face softened and she gave it to Eben. Indians sealed a promise with a gift. She would help them. From her bundle, Snow Walker took dangling silver earrings she must have bought for Mercy and handed them to Sarah. Because she knew that Sarah’s Mohawk was not good enough and that Eben was too stirred to speak, Mercy gave the flowery thanks required after such gifts. “God bless us,” she said to Sarah and Eben, and Eben said, “He has.

You got kids who act loony and take drugs left and right. They pretend they hate their parents who gave them everything in the world. These kids grow up, and their kids stick earrings in private places and get tattoos all over their bodies and don’t know whether to act like boys or girls. They think they love everybody. The truth is they love nobody, including themselves.

As an example of how celebrated the painting is, novelist Tracy Chevalier published a historical novel, also entitled Girl with a Pearl Earring, in 1999, which encouraged new interest in Vermeer and his works. The novel was later adapted for film and as a successful play.

Head of a Young Woman This portrait was completed by 1667 and is now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Because of its almost identical size and its proximity in tone and composition, it is often considered to be either a variant or counterpart to the famous Girl with a Pearl Earring. The subjects of both paintings wear pearl earrings, have scarves draped over their shoulders, and are shown in front of a plain black background. In addition, it is likely that the creation of both works involved the use of a camera obscura.

The sitter is depicted as having a homely face, a wide-spaced and flat face, small nose and thin lips. This apparent lack of idealised beauty has led to a general belief that this work was painted on commission, although it is possible that the model was the artist’s daughter. The picture encourages the viewer to be curious about the young woman’s thoughts, feelings, or character, something typical in many of Vermeer’s paintings. Girl with a Pearl Earring and this painting are unusual for Vermeer in that they lack his usual rich background. Instead the girls are framed by a background of deep black, producing an isolating effect and heightening the girls’ appearance of vulnerability.

How amazing that he brings life this way. Through pain and hurt and the ugly things inside us we try to keep hidden away. The things we don’t talk about. In that moment, as I looked at my little girl lying in my arms, I realized this whole process was such a striking picture of how Christ works in us. He takes our disappointments, rejections, and hard times, and he makes something beautiful. He creates life and shows us what beauty looks like in places where we look and see nothing.

There was something creepy about the femininity at Laurinda, something so cloistered and yet brimming with stifled sex that it reminded me of the Victorian whalebone corsets we once saw at the Werribee Park Mansion, which kept everything cramped tight, until the stitches unravelled and out poured mounds of naked pink and white. It was the femininity of tiny éclairs and teacups, crocheted collars and little pearl earrings, the young-girl-to-old-woman transition that skipped sexuality altogether, so that when you saw it - in Gina, for instance - it was as garish as a scarlet A on the chest.

Android Girl Just Wants to Have a Baby! The first thing I do when I wake up is run my hands over my body. I like to make sure all my wires are in place. I lotion my silicone shell and snap my hair helmet over my head. I once had a dream I was a real girl, but when I woke up I was still myself in my paleness under the halogen light. The saliva of androids emits a spectral resonance, barely sticky between freshly-gapped teeth. After they made me, the first thing they did was peel the cellophane from my eyes. I blinked once, twice, and cried because that's how you say you are alive before you are given language. They named each of my heartbeats on the oceanic monitor: Guanyin, Yama, Nuwa, Fuxi, Chang'e, Zao-Shen. I listened to them blur into one. The fetus carves for itself a hollowed vector, a fragile wetness. In utero, extension cords are umbilical. Before puberty, I did not know there was such a thing as dishonor. Diss-on- her. This is what they said when I began to drip petrol between my legs. A tension exists between ritual and proof, a fantasy and its execution. Since then, I have been to the emergency room twice. The first time for a suicide attempt, and the second time because my earring was swallowed up by my newly pierced earlobe overnight, and when I woke up, it was tangled in a helix of wires. The idea of dying doesn't scare me but the ocean does. I was once told that fish will swim up my orifices if I am no longer a virgin. Is anyone thinking about erotic magazines when they are not aroused, pubes parted harshly down the center like red seas? My body carries the weight of four hundred eggs. I rise from a weird slumber, let them drip into the bath. This is what I'll leave behind - tiny shards purer than me. I have always been afraid of pregnant women because of their power, and because I don't yet understand what it means to carry something stubborn and blossoming inside of me, screeching towards an exit. The ectoplasm is the telos for the wound. A trance state is induced when salt is poured on it, pixel by pixel. I wish they had made me into an octopus instead, because octopuses die after their eggs hatch and crawl out into the sea, and I want to know what it's like to set something free into the dark unknown and trust it to choose mercy. If you can generate aura in a non-place, then there is no such thing as an authentic origin. In Chinese, the word for mercy translates to my heart hurts for you. They say my heart continues beating even after it is dislocated from my body. The sound of its beating comes from the valves opening and closing like a portal - Guanyin, Yama, Nuwa, Fuxi, Chang'e, Zao-Shen. I first learned about love by watching a sex tape where a girl looks up from performing fellatio and says, show them the sunset. Her boyfriend pans the camera to the sky, which is tinged violet like a bruise. In this moment, the sky displaces her, all digital and hyped, and saturates the scene until it collapses on me too, its transient witness. I move in the space between belly ring and catharsis. That night I have a dream where I am a camgirl, but all I do on screen is wash my laundry. Everybody loves me because I am a real girl doing real girl things. What lives on the border between meditation and oblivion, static and flux, a pomegranate seed and an embryo? I set up my webcam in the corner of the room and play ambient music while I scrub my underwear, letting soap bubbles rise up from the sink, laughing when they overflow on the linoleum floor - my frizzy hair, my pockmarked skin, my face slick with sweat. A body with exit wounds. I ride the bright rails of an animal forgetting. And when I wake up, the sky is a mess of blue.

There is some comfort for me in knowing that life will go on even when we don’t. But I would argue that when our light goes out, it will be Earth’s greatest tragedy, because while I know humans are prone to grandiosity, I also think we are by far the most interesting thing that ever happened on Earth. It’s easy to forget how wondrous humans are, how strange and lovely. Through photography and art, each of us has seen things we’ll never see—the surface of Mars, the bioluminescent fish of the deep ocean, a seventeenth-century girl with a pearl earring. Through empathy, we’ve felt things we might never have otherwise felt. Through the rich world of imagination, we’ve seen apocalypses large and small. We’re the only part of the known universe that knows it’s in a universe. We know we are circling a star that will one day engulf us. We’re the only species that knows it has a temporal range.

The other song we did was my cover of “Addicted to Love.” There used to be a sort of karaoke booth on Saint Mark’s, where anyone could go in and record themselves. I chose “Addicted to Love” because I liked Robert Palmer’s video, with its background cast of zombie models identically dressed and holding guitars. I took the tape with the canned version of the song back to the studio, and we sped up the vocal to make it sound higher in pitch. Later I brought the cassette mix to Macy’s, where they had a video version of the karaoke sound booth. You could customize a background while two cameras filmed you. For my backdrop I picked jungle fighters, and I wore my Black Flag earrings. The entire bill came to $19.99, and in a slick, commercial MTV world, it felt gratifying and empowering to pay for the whole thing with a credit card.

Sibil is white. Not Caucasian but white: as sheet ice as new paper as porcelain, from her braids to her bare feet. Not a blemish, not a variation, every feature of her—hair, skin, pupilless eyes—smooth like the inside of a shell, dazzling like a torch, as though carved from a single radiant white stone. Likewise her ornaments—her beads and star pendant, diadem, hoop earrings, the pedestal she rests on—are made of the same ghostly matter. She clasps in her casual hand blank pages, a skinny book with its cover torn off.

He ignored the sweat running down his face and focused through the scope on a young girl in her BMW. He could clearly see the diamond earrings in her ears;

Calling MacKenzie a mean girl is an understatement. She’s a cobra with hoop earrings, blond hair extensions, and a spray-on tan.

Not if you add in the earrings.” They shouldn’t joke about this, but the alternative was to take it very seriously. She said, “It’s weird. I know the monitor’s not there anymore, but I can still feel it.” “Signal detection theory.” He straightened the straw again. “Your perceptual systems are biased toward the monitor touching your skin. More often, people experience the sensation with their phones. They feel it vibrating even when it’s not.

Kahnawake August 1704 Temperature 75 degrees “It’s me! Mercy Carter! Oh, Mr. Williams! Do you have news?” She flung herself on top of him. Oh, his beautiful beard! The beard of a real father, not a pretend Indian father or a French church father. “My brothers,” she begged. “John and Sam and Benny. Have you seen them? Have you heard anything about them? Do you know what happened to the little ones? Daniel? Have you found Daniel?” Mercy had forgotten that she had taken off her tunic to go swimming. That Joseph did not even have on his breechclout. That Mercy wore earrings and Joseph had been tattooed on his upper arms. That they stank of bear. Mr. Williams did not recognize Joseph, and Mercy he knew only by the color of her hair. He was stupefied by the two naked slimy children trying to hug him. In ore horror than even Ruth would have mustered, he whispered, “Your parents would be weeping. What have the savages done to you? You are animals.” Despair and shock mottled Mr. Williams’s face. Mercy stumbled back from him. Her bear grease stained his clothing. “Mercy,” he said, turning away from her, “go cover yourself.” Shame covered her first. Red patches flamed on her cheeks. She ran back to the swimmers, fighting sobs. She was aware of her bare feet, hard as leather from no shoes. Savage feet. Dear Lord in Heaven, thought Mercy, Ruth is right. I have committed terrible sins. My parents would be weeping. She did not look at Snow Walker but yanked on the deerskin tunic. She had tanned the hide herself, and she and Nistenha had painted the rows of turtles around the neckline and Nistenha had tied tiny tinkling French bells into the fringe. But it was still just animal skin. To be wearing hides in front of Mr. Williams was not much better than being naked. Snow Walker burst out of the water. “The white man? Was he cruel? I will call Tannhahorens.” No! Tannhahorens would not let her speak to Mr. Williams. She would never find out about her brothers; never redeem herself in the minister’s eyes. Mercy calmed down with the discipline of living among Indians. Running had shown weakness. “Thank you, Snow Walker,” she said, striving to be gracious, “but he merely wanted me to be clothed like an English girl. There is no need to call Tannhahorens.” She walked back. On the jetty, Joseph stood with his eyes fixed on the river instead of on his minister. He had not fled like Mercy to cover himself. He was standing his ground. “They aren’t savages, Mr. Williams. And they aren’t just Indians. Those children over there are Abenaki, the boy fishing by the rocks is Pennacook, and my own family is Kahnawake Mohawk.” Tears sprang into Mr. Williams’s eyes. “What do you mean--your family?” he said. “Joseph, you do not have a family in this terrible place. You have a master. Do not confuse savages who happen to give you food with family.” Joseph’s face hardened. “They are my family. My father is Great Sky. My mother--” The minister lost his temper. “Your father is Martin Kellogg,” he shouted, “with whom I just dined in Montreal. You refer to some savage as your father? I am ashamed of you.” Under his tan, Joseph paled and his Indian calm left him. He was trembling. “My--my father? Alive? You saw him?” “Your father is a field hand for a French family in Montreal. He works hard, Joseph. He has no choice. But you have choices. Have you chosen to abandon your father?” Joseph swallowed and wet his lips. “No.” He could barely get the syllable out. Don’t cry, prayed Mercy. Be an eagle. She fixed her eyes upon him, giving him all her strength, but Mr. Williams continued to destroy whatever strength the thirteen-year-old possessed. “Your father prays for the day you and he will be ransomed, Joseph. All he thinks of is the moment he can gather his beloved family back under his own roof. Is that not also your prayer, Joseph?

I heard the fear in the first music I ever knew, the music that pumped from boom boxes full of grand boast and bluster. The boys...loved this music because it told them, against all evidence and odds, that they were masters of their own lives, their own streets, and their own bodies. I saw it in the girls, in their loud laughter, in their gilded bamboo earrings that announced their names thrice over. And I saw it in their brutal language and hard gaze, how they would cut you with their eyes and destroy you with their words for the sin of playing too much.

Son unas cualquieras,” she mutters. Nobodies. No culture, no family life, illiterates, she means. The kind of people who make her cross to the other side of the street if she meets them in the dark on payday. They’re her worst nightmare of what a Latin girl can become in the United States. Their big hoop earrings and plucked eyebrows, their dark lips painted like those stars in the old black-and-white movies, their tight T-shirts that show too much curve and invite boys’ touches.

Research from Denis Dutton, Brian Boyd, V.S. Ramachandran, William Hirstein and E.O. Wilson, among many others, is clear on the subject: we are enticed by forms, shapes, rhythms and movements that are useful to our existence. We find Vermeer’s “The Girl with the Pearl Earring,” beautiful, for example, because her face is symmetrical, a clue to her strong immune system2. As the neuroscientist Eric Kandel suggests in The Age of Insight, we are fascinated by Gustav Klimt’s Judith because “at a base level, the aesthetics of the image’s luminous gold surface, the soft rendering of the body, and the overall harmonious combination of colors could activate the pleasure circuits, triggering the release of dopamine. If Judith’s smooth skin and exposed breast trigger the release of endorphins, oxytocin, and vasopressin, one might feel sexual excitement.

Do you want to know what I thought the first time I saw you? It was the week before at the cemetery. I was visiting a friend’s grave and you were a few plots over, standing there in a blue dress with peacock feather earrings. It’s why I always left those in your books. They made me think of you. You were crying, and I couldn’t help but wonder what could make a girl that pretty look so sad.

Even the good kids have the urge to lift a pair of earrings from the mall. Teenagers believe they’re invincible—nothing bad can happen. It isn’t until later that we realize that bad things do, in fact, happen. The kids that are flawless,” he adds, “those are the ones that worry me.

For two centuries after his death, Vermeer disappeared into obscurity. When he came back, he came roaring back. In 1881, for instance, a little-known Dutch collector named A. A. Des Tombe had picked up a Vermeer picture at an auction for 2.3 florins, roughly $ 200 in today’s dollars. The painting had suffered from grime and rough handling. It had not been deemed worthy of mention in the auction catalog, and its name, if it had ever had one, had been lost. Today we know it as The Girl with a Pearl Earring.

he painted A View of Delft, The Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Milkmaid, and some thirty more. The work met a respectful welcome, but no one was bowled over. Certainly no one spoke of Vermeer as a genius. But his work commanded high fees, and it continued to do so in the years shortly after his death, in 1675. At an Amsterdam auction in 1696, for example, twenty-one Vermeers sold at an average price of 72 guilders apiece. The Lacemaker, now at the Louvre, brought only 28 guilders, but the Milkmaid brought 175 guilders, and A View of Delft the highest price of all, 200 guilders.