Ill Will

I realized that I had the choice. I could give this moment a meaning, or I could choose to ignore it. It just depended on the kind of story I wanted to tell myself.

People can find patterns in all kinds of random events. It's called apophenia. It's the tendency we humans have to find meaning in disconnected information.

I believe that! Events in our life have meaning because we choose to give it to them.

we pulled into the garden center, where “Carol of the Bells” was blaring out of tinny speakers that had been mounted on poles. It was like the kind of music you’d play if Santa was a serial killer.

You know what you learn when you study the legal system? Poor people pass down damage the way rich people pass down an inheritance.

And he saw now that it wasn't real. That it had never been real. He could feel that other life shrinking and losing its possibility, and he knew that it was something that he should never, ever, think of again.

I never understood why people from the 1980s thought there would be flying cars. It just seemed really dangerous and impractical to me, but they all talked about it, so it must have been a thing. Meanwhile, my dream for the future was that it wouldn't involve mass extinction and large-scale water shortages and cannibalism.

What happened to us? It was a question that interested her. Most people seemed to believe that they were experts of their own life story. They had a set of memories that they strung like beads, and this necklace told a sensible tale. But she suspected that most of these stories would fall apart under strict examination--that, in fact, we were only peeping through a keyhole of our lives, and the majority of the truth, the reality of what happened to us, was hidden. Memories were no more solid than dreams...What happened to us? She drew smoke, considering the question. Was it possible that we would never really know? What if we were not, actually, the curators of our own lives?

Their house was about a mile outside of town. The kids would play outdoors, in the backyard and the large stubble field behind the house. Dusk seemed to last for hours, and when it was finally dark they would sit under the porch light, catching thickly buzzing June bugs and moths, or even an occasional toad who hopped into the circle of light, tempted by the halo of insects that floated around the bare orange lightbulb next to the front door

We are always telling stories to ourselves, about ourselves...But we can control those stories...I believe that! Events in our life have meaning because we choose to give it to them

What do you call that feeling when you're certain that the world is doomed? It's one of those feelings that's physical, like low blood sugar or too much caffeine, a message from the lizard brain. But for a moment you know that it's not just you. Not just Cleveland. It's everything. We, the creatures of the earth, are really and truly fucked.

We are always telling a story to ourselves, about ourselves,” he’d say.  Sometimes he would make a gesture that was almost like a touch, though he actually rarely made skin-to-skin contact. “But we can control those stories,” he’d say. “I believe that! Events in our life have meaning because we choose to give it to them.

I realized,” he’d say. “I realized that I had the choice. I could give this moment a meaning, or I could choose to ignore it. It just depended on the kind of story I wanted to tell myself.

There’s this spiral where you can’t stop feeling horrible about your horrible self, and it makes you act more horrible.

You grew up poor, honey. Poor people don't have good luck.

There’s a lot of bad influences in Cleveland, I’m starting to think. It’s a shithole, you know? I think if I’d been born in a nicer place I wouldn’t be such a fuckup.

Unfortunately, there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.

Miles away, the red taillights of semi-trucks were moving along the interstate, and Dustin was suddenly aware that there were people inside them, that they were traveling to distant places and they would never know that he and Rusty were watching them. It made him feel a strange, tingling kind of ache.

Then he began to see through too many things. He cogitated all the hope out of his life, which of course is the danger.

Poor me. A murderer who got caught before he could murder anybody.

He’s like a little bratwurst walking through the dog pound.

But maybe it was just a sort of Bluebeard’s wife thing. You can’t help yourself: Open the door, you stupid bitch. Go ahead.

the professor talking about eigengrau—intrinsic gray, brain gray. It was the color you “saw” when light was totally absent, a kind of visual noise, like snow static on a television.

It’s called apophenia. It’s the tendency we humans have to find meaning in disconnected information. For example, some people believe in what’s called the ‘twenty-three enigma.’ That everything is related to the number twenty-three. It’s a surprisingly involved belief.

Your Mom's Car. Think about that. Try to wrap your brain around the supernatural and spiritual implications that the name bears down you. Your Mom's Car, holding its hand out straight, fingers curled, a zombie reaching for your neck.

You look up for a moment and you're not sure which life is real. You've split yourself into so many honeycombed parts that they barely notice each other---all of them pacing, concurrently, parallel streams of though, and each one thinks of its self as me.