“Choose whatever box you like, Mike. Just don't put me in one, son. Believe me, I won't fit.”
“You have to take people one at a time, check out what's in their head and heart before you judge.”
“At the edge of heartbreak, we both take a leap into the unknown...That's when we see it, a buoy callled friendship.”
“Love is not me being who you want. Your definition is a whirlpool trying to suck me in and I'm drowning. Don't you see?...It's time...Time you stop telling me who to be, how to live. This is my portrait. You chose your canvas. Let me choose mine.”
“Only the wind shatters the silence. I have been here before choking in solitude.”
“If a dream is in your heart, you never lose it.”
“The fact is that you are more comfortable with myth than man.”
“So don't tell me that I can't fit in. My heart beats like a talking drum.”
“Forget who I really am, who I really want to be.”
“Jealousy is a waste of energy...focus on what I have, not what I don't.”
“I'd pretend their words were water and let them roll off my back. Now, I'm nobody's duck, and their words stung a whole lot more than water.”
“You laugh, rap my woody shell with wicked whispers shaped like knuckles, then toss me aside. Lucky for me, I don't bruise easily. Besides, you loss is someone else's gain for I am coconut, and the heart of me is sweeter than you know.”
“I woke up this morning exhausted from hiding the me of me. So I stand here confiding there's more to Devon than jump shot and rim. I'm more than tall and lengthy of limb. I dare you to peep behind these eyes, discover the poet in tough-guy disguise. Don't call me Jump Shot. My name is surprise.”
“He'll never do it again,' she swears, but he will because she'll let him. Now me? I've got no use for imitation love that packs a punch.”
“Look around. Take the tour. Fear hangs on the wall and shame sometimes. Emotional dislocation too. But I am brave in my admission. Are you? When no one is looking, I check to see if anyone seems as scared as me, or lonely, or shy, or insecure. Is it just me? I'm not so sure. Is your heart an onion too? Show me yours, I'll show you mine we used to say. Your turn. Peel away.”
“Do something about it, or shut up.”
“The crashing sound of years lost shattered in her ears, and new fears emerged from the looking glass. Sometimes I wonder if she'll ever sing again.”
“I'm an artist...The difference is that I don't tell anybody. I refuse to give them new reasons to laugh at me.”
“The day she clips her way out of her cocoon, the only sound she plans to hear is a deafening cheer.”
“The lack of goodness in the young gun's heart was oxygen to the fire, and so he burned for a good long while before I woke. The dream stoked my faith in the judgment and justice that will come someday or this afternoon soon. I turn up the collar of my white robe, relieved to know that God's got me covered 'cause I'm good, but not that good.”
“Ready or not, I peer into your soul and dive deep... Your eyes don't like what I see. You don't want to be me. So you curse and smash the mirror which gets you what? A bit of blood , a handful of glass splinters, another source of pain.”
“Kiev, you understand, is a medieval city full of wild superstition and mysticism. It has always been the heart of Russian reaction. The Black Hundreds, may they sink into their graves, have aroused against you the most ignorant and brutal of the masses. They are deathly afraid of Jews and at the same time frighten them to death. This reveals to you something about the human condition. Rich or poor, those of our brethren who can run out of here are running. Some who can’t are already mourning.”
“And the council doesn’t recognize any kind of temporary insanity defense. Which was a real shame, because most of the councilmen had considered me crazy for most of my life.”
“You killed my dog! Get your affairs in order.”
“There is no number so unlucky as thirteen. Once, in Valhalla, there was a feast for twelve gods, but Loki, the trickster god, went uninvited and he played his evil games, persuading Hod the Blind to throw a sprig of mistletoe at his brother, Baldur. Baldur was the favorite god, the good one, but he could be killed by mistletoe and so his blind brother threw the sprig and Baldur died and Loki laughed, and ever since we have known that thirteen is the evil number. Thirteen birds in the sky are an omen of disaster, thirteen pebbles in a cooking pot will poison any food placed in the pot, while thirteen at a meal is an invitation to death. Thirteen spears against a fortress could only mean defeat. Even the Christians know thirteen is unlucky. Father Beocca told me that was because there were thirteen men at Christ’s last meal, and the thirteenth was Judas.”
“He felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness - the sense that is where we really belong.”
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