A book is like a pump. It gives nothing unless first you give to it. You prime a pump with your own water, you work the handle with your own strength. You do this because you expect to get back more than you give.
And this wasn’t lying, not really. It was leaving out.
You might question a winkle – a feeling that came to you right out of the blue – but you didn’t question knowing.
A change is as good as a rest.
There’s always someone who knows something.
What you don’t know, you can’t tell. Or made to tell.
The turtle couldn’t help us.
As a species we’re fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?
It was as hysterical as a woman having a hot flash.
Any parting could be forever, and we don’t know.
There seems to be no air in the air she breaths.
In the end we always wear out our worries. That’s what Wireman says.
Your pimples are the Lord’s way of chastising you. Now eat your pie.
Until that afternoon in October four years ago, I hadn’t known dogs could scream.
They had become a fixed star in the shifting firmament of the high school’s relationships, the acknowledged Romeo and Juliet. And she knew with sudden hatefulness that there was one couple like them in every white suburban high school in America.
What I’m saying is that I’m trying to find rational reasons to explain irrational feelings, and that’s neveer a good sign.
The monster never dies.
Sometimes dead is better.
If you can’t laugh when things go bad – laugh and put on a little carnival – then you’re either dead or wishing you were.
I’ve met talespinners before, Jake, and they’re all cut more or less from the same cloth. They tell tales because they’re afraid of life.