Even a killer needs to talk, to tell his life story, so bad he’ll come and sit beside a grave or a rotting body and just blab, blab, blab at it for hours. Until he makes sense. Until the killer can convince himself with the story of his new reality. The reality that – he was right.
Every stupid thing in the world, decaffeinated coffee, alcohol free beer, makes perfect sense, not because you’re any smarter, but because the smart part of your brain’s on vacation.
Raymond K. K. Hessel, your dinner is going to taste better than any meal you’ve ever eaten, and tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of your entire life.
You’d be surprised just how fast you can close the door on your past. Learn needlepoint. Make a stained-glass lamp.
Life in These United States. Laughter Is the Best Medicine.
Here at St. Anthony’s, they have to close the curtains before it gets dark, since if a resident sees themself reflected in a window they’ll think somebody’s peeping in at them. It’s called “sun-downing.” When all the old folks get crazy at sunset.
In the workshop where I started to write fiction, you had to read your work in public. Most times, you read in a bar or coffeehouse where you’d be competing with the roar of the espresso machine. Or the football game on television. Music and drunk people talking. Against all this noise and distraction, only the most shocking, most physical, dark and funny stories got heard. Our test audience would never sit still for “Barn-Raising Club.
If you asked my dad about selecting any kind of professional career, he’d tell you, “Don’t make a date with a heart attack.” Meaning: You’ve got to pace yourself and not forget to slow down. No job is forever. So relax and have some fun.
I just want the days of my life to add up to something. The way every day of your life, the way it can just disappear in front of the television, Denny says he wants a rock to show for each day. Something tangible. Just one thing. A little monument to mark the end of each day.
You realize it’s not wooden stakes that kill vampires. It’s all the emotional baggage and letdowns they have to carry around for century after century.
If you won’t share my life with me, maybe you’ll share my death.
Nobody used to look at George Washington, with his wooden teeth, in his powdered wig, and say, Fashion Victim.
Artificial over-stimulation seemed like the perfect way to stifle a generation of young people who wanted more and more from a world where less and less was available. Whether the victims were men or women, arousal addiction seemed to have become the new normal.
It’s amazing what a woman will read into it if you by accident say, I love you. Ten times out of ten, a guy means I love this.
The democracy of capitalism guaranteed that only the most banal men, the men with the most moderate intellect and most readily appealing looks and talents, would rise to notoriety. And these would only be a handful from among the millions.
One step to the sink, and I calmly begin to scrub my dripping hands, careful to pick and scrape the words sorrow and tragedy from where they’re lodged beneath each fingernail.
In Hell, it’s our attachments to a fixed identity that torture us.
She tries to not ask, to stop asking, but the effort is like trying to un-pop a balloon.
As if she ought to know better than to scream and bleed in public.
Watching hours of television seemed to help, but it took brainpower to be so dumb.