All the small, simple, conscious acts of living a sudden defense against the dying we do every day.
There are no wrong decisions – only different ones.
Im a techno moron. I need help just to plug in my video camera.
Men have feelings too, you know. You bruise the petals of my manflower.
This is how the fire starts. This is how we burn.
Her eyes take on that suspicious, wounded look girls get when they know they’ve fallen off the top rung of friendship and someone else has passed them, but they don’t know when or how the change took place.
We have traveled through space and time. We have been many places. Visited many worlds. And there is good news: the acoustics everywhere are terrific.
If this were a movie, I would bust a secret move so fierce the entire place would be razed to the ground. I’d finish with something snappy like “And don’t forget my soda, punk” while I strolled off into the night.
I’m an oddity of one, my strangeness too complicated to explain or share.
I’ve been poked and prodded in places I’d always prided myself on keeping untouched for that one special doctor who gives me a ring and a promise someday.
Yes, go on. Leave. You’re always coming and going. The rest of us are stuck here. Do you think he’d still love you if he knew who you are? He doesn’t really care – only when it suits him.
I think about dying every day, because I can’t stop thinking about living.
I will never, ever drink whiskey again. From now on, it’s strictly sherry.
Can we really conquer chaos so easily? If that were so, I should be able to prune the pandemonium of my own soul into something neat and tidy rather than this maze of wants and needs and misgivings that has me forever feeling as if I cannot fit into the landscape of things.
Pastoralia by George Saunders. Possibly my favorite book. Its one of the weirdest books Ive ever read. If Monty Python and Thomas Pynchon had a love child, and it was raised by Frank Zappa on a weird commune, that would be this book.
I’m going to eviscerate you and leave your organs on a pike in the yard as a warning to those who wear large jewelry.
Didn’t you have any sadistic nannies who told you these tales to keep you quiet and well behaved at night? Heavens, what’s to become of the Empire if governesses have lost their touch for scaring the wits out of their girls?
Its so daunting to walk into a classroom or a school auditorium. Its like the worlds weirdest blind date. I know all the students are thinking, Who is this tool standing up in front of us?
We have work to do if you are not to be a total failure like high-waisted, acid-wash jeans.
You are unique, and this is a beautiful, beautiful thing, grasshopper.