Broken Monsters

Shakespeare would have it wrong these days. It's not the world that's the stage - it's social media, where you're trying to put on a show. The rest of your life is rehearsals, prepping in the wings to be fabulous online.

Everyone lives three versions of themselves; a public life, a private life and a secret life.

He always thought a muse should be sex on legs.

People don’t want novelty – they want the reassurance of familiarity. No-one wants to be challenged, no-one wants to have their minds blown. There is an insatiable appetite for affirmation.

They used to put people in stocks to shame them in public. Now you just need a wi-fi connection. On the internet, humiliation lives forever

This is the way the world is now. Everything is public. You have to find other people who understand.

Keep your options open, his parents told him, but they didn’t tell him that growing older is about your options shutting down, one by one.

I think Canada probably has an embargo on dicks.” “That’s why they’re so nice. No dicks allowed.

Good manners will do that; turn a situation around. You got to treat people like people.

Florrie smiles with unmoderated joy, because she can't see that most people bank their happiness like it's something you might run out of

Anyone can find they've been standing on the trapdoor when they thought they were the spotlight attraction.

have a nice day’ doesn’t sound sincere anymore.” “That’s terrible.” But she can understand it, how words can get worn down like shoes.

An army of the beautiful deformed, from miniatures to monsters in every medium imaginable.

The dream knows what they are waiting for, even if they don’t themselves. The end of everything. The moment when it reveals its miracle boy and all the eyes will look and their seeing will be horror and glory and wonder and it will pierce the skin of the world, collapse dimensions, and open the doors and the work will breathe and dance in his shoes and the dream will be able to escape.

The original stories are mined out, and all that’s left is fool’s gold.

Explosions and fighting robots and shit. What’s that got to do with the heart?

I’d rather be a happy Hooters waitress than a depressed out-of-work actor.

In our patakis, our folk myths, we believe that we come to the world with a destiny we picked for ourselves in Arun. Obatala creates the human body, but you have to get your head from the potter who molds them out of clay in his warehouse. On a good day he makes beautiful heads, but sometimes he gets drunk and makes a bad head. It’s a divine defect. There’s no way to tell from the outside, but once you’ve chosen your head, you have to live your destiny.

Life lesson: looks plus don’t-give-a-fuck confidence mean you can have anything you want—any

Shakespeare would have it wrong these days. It’s not the world that’s the stage—it’s social media, where you’re trying to put on a show. The rest of your life is rehearsals, prepping in the wings to be fabulous online.

Anyone can find they’ve been standing on the trapdoor when they thought they were the spotlight attraction.

You got to treat people like people. Something his momma taught him, along with how to use a gun, and what the minimum going rate for a whore was.

The post-divorce lines around Gabby's mouth tugged down her whole face. She suddenly looks older. Older than the image Layla carries in her head. Of her mom back when she still wore a uniform, her dark hair in a high ballerina bun, gun at her waist, like the cops on TV. If safe was a person, her mom was it.

The world is condensing, attention spans narrowing to tiny screens, and there are people who are wittier and smarter, who know how to write for those nanospaces.

Gabi had felt the same way. As if the universe had abruptly expanded, like opening up a map, in a way she wouldn't have believed was possible. Love. The real thing. Huge and hungry and savage.

He’s already writing the catalog copy in his mind. Dehumanizing distortions, the obliteration of self, with a nod to Francis Bacon or Steven Cohen. Heck, David Bowie. There