She is an incredibly intelligent idiot.
I’m just tired of people judging me because I fit into a certain mold.
Nick loved me. A six-o kind of love: He looooooved me. But he didn’t love me, me. Nick loved a girl who doesn’t exist. I was pretending, the way I often did, pretending to have a personality. I can’t help it, it’s what I’ve always done: The way some women change fashion regularly, I change personalities.
It’s all too much for her, the cruelty of human beings.
She talked to me because we had the same chemicals in our blood: shame, anger, greed. Unjustified nostalgia.
Isn’t a smile a girl’s best weapon?
Draw a picture of my soul, and it’d be a scribble with fangs.
I was already tired of talking, and I’d said very little.
I hate people who start conversations with facts – what are you supposed to do with that? Sure is hot today. Yes, it is.
I appreciate a straightforward apology the way a tone-deaf person enjoys a fine piece of music.
Smile, it can’t be that bad! Yeah, actually, it can, jackwad.
Nothing to it but to do it.
It’s an insane, insane crime, a lot of it isn’t going to make sense. That’s why people are so obsessed with these murders. If they made any sense, they wouldn’t really be mysteries, right?
Thirteen years old, I thought to myself, but I felt a spear of admiration for the girl. When I’d been sad, I hurt myself. Amma hurt other people. When I’d wanted attention, I’d submitted myself to boys: Do what you want; just like me. Amma’s sexual offerings seemed a form of aggression. Long skinny legs and slim wrists and high, babied voice, all aimed like a gun. Do what I want; I might like you.
There were a lot of people who deserved a lesson, deserved to really understand, that nothing came easy, that most things were going to go sour.
When we got home, she’d trail off to her room like an unfinished sentence, and I would sit outside with my face pressed against her door and replay the day in my head, searching for clues to what I’d done to displease her.
I was lying in bed thinking about killing myself, a hobby of mine. Indulgent afternoon daydreaming: A shotgun, my mouth, a bang and my head jerking once, twice, blood on the wall. Spatter, splatter.
I can feel a better version of me somewhere in there – hidden behind a liver or attached to a bit of spleen.
I heard you could do that – buy books by the yard, turn them into furniture. People are dumb. I’ll never get over how dumb people are.
Instead of asking yourself what happened, just accept that it happened. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the Serenity Prayer.