It was the hat. He looked sweet in the hat. How could a man in a fuzzy blue hat have used human bones to pave his roads?
Rich children are always blond, Jocelyn goes. It has to do with vitamins.
That’s what death is, Danny thought: wanting to talk to someone and not being able to.
So this is it ⎯ what cost me all that time. A man who turned out to be old, a house that turned out to be empty.
Time’s a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?” Scotty shook his head. “The goon won.
I don’t know what happened to me,” he said, shaking his head. “I honestly don’t.” … “You grew up, Alex.
Soiled, forgotten coats of arms were carved above their massive doorways, and these unsettled Ted: such universal, defining symbols made meaningless by nothing more than time.
Sure, everything is ending,” Jules said, “but not yet.
Too Clear, too clean. The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was “digitization” which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh. Film, photography, music: dead. “An aesthetic holocaust!
Her only thought was of getting away, as if she were carrying a live grenade from inside the house, so that when it exploded, it would destroy just herself.
The pause makes you think the song will end. And then the song isn’t really over, so you’re relieved. But then the song does actually end, because every song ends, obviously, and THAT. TIME. THE. END. IS. FOR. REAL.
This is the music business. ‘Five years is five hundred years’ – your words.
You can do it alone. But it’s going to be so much harder.
Oh we’ll know each other for forever’ Bix said. ‘The days of losing touch are almost gone.’ ‘What does that mean? ‘ Drew asks.’We’re going to meet again in a different place,’ Bix said. ‘Everyone we’ve lost, we’ll find. Or they’ll find us.
Kathy was a Republican, one of those people who used the unforgivable phrase “meant to be”–usually when describing her own good fortune or the disasters that had befallen other people.
But Phoebe loved her mother best as she was now, wistful, out-of-step, her laugh tinged always with sadness, as if things were only funny in spite of themselves.
I’m sorry and I believe in you and I’ll always be near you, protecting you, and I will never leave you, I’ll be curled around your heart for the rest of your life.
I haven’t had writer’s block. I think it’s because my process involves writing very badly.
I think ethical ambivalence is a kind of innoculation, a way of excusing yourself in advance for something you actually want to do. No offense.
A frenzy of activity that had mostly led him in circles: wasn’t that a fairly accurate description of lust?
If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you.
The world is full of shitheads, Rhea. Don’t listen to them—listen to me. And I know that Lou is one of those shitheads. But I listen.
I guess it’s always romantic when two people fall in love…. Even if it turns out not to be real.
…our familiar features rinsed in weird adulthood.
I can’t tell if she’s actually real, or if she’s stopped caring if she’s real or not. Or is not caring what makes a person real?
You can only write regularly if you’re willing to write badly… Accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.
…underneath that I’d said something else: we were both a couple of asswipes, and now only I’m an asswipe; why? And underneath that, something else: once an asswipe, always an asswipe.
When does a fake Mohawk become a real Mohawk? Who decides? How do you know if it’s happened?
No one is waiting for me. In this story, I’m the girl no one is waiting for. Usually the girl is fat, but my problem is more rare, which is freckles: I look like someone threw handfuls of mud at my face.
You said you were a fairy princessYou said you were a shooting starYou said we’d go to Bora BoraNow look at where the fuck we are
She’d risked everything, and here was the result: the raw, warped core of her life.