“Love is like breathing. You take it in and let it out.”
“Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.”
“I think... the secret is to just settle for the shape of your life takes...Instead of you know, always waiting and wishing for what might make you happy.”
“I know it's a crock of shit. I ain't offering you happily-ever-after. I'm offering you... happily-maybe-sometimes-ever-after. Sort of. You know, with warts and shit." -Thayer”
“If you want your prayers answered, get up off your knees and do something about them.”
“It was a matter of perspective, I began to see.
The whole world was crazy; I'd flattered myself by assuming I was a semifinalist."
-- Dolores Price”
“Life seemed nearest to acceptable at four A.M.”
“This was what could happen to you: you could end up this far from where you thought you were going.”
“I usually learn more from the situations I hate than the ones I love.”
“I thought about how love was always the thing that did that - smashed into you, left you raw. The deeper you loved, the deeper it hurt.”
“He's splitting me open, I thought. He'll break me and then I'll die.”
“Here is a girl who is pretty in a quiet way. I bet she's had a very sad life.”
“All the dead bolts, pulled shades and hidden knives in the world couldn't protect you from the truth.”
“He was right. And he was an insensitive shit.”
“That time we separated was my idea. I thought, well, I'm fifty years old and there might be someone else out there. People waste their happiness - that's what makes me sad. Everyone's so scared to be happy.”
“Getting a job scared her but she was determined not to shy away from risk. That’s what life’s all about. Climbing out onto the airplane wing and jumping off.”
“But I think this: that whatever prices I've paid, whatever sorrows I shoulder, well, I have blessings, too. Not just my family now, but the others-the ones who have died...They're with me still. They're here...”
“Who gets the change?" the clerk asked. "You or...your fella?"
Oh, he's not my boyfriend," I said. "He's my mother.”
“Fuck you, I said."
Uh-oh. There's that angry word.”
“If you risked love, it took you wherever you wanted to go. If you repressed it, you ended up unhappy.”
“Life's a shit sandwich, my ass. Life's a polka and don't you forget it!”
“She preferred to get high on life.”
“You're just catching me during one of my fallow periods, that's all. One of my compost years. I'm expecting a creative leap pretty soon now.”
“She's got a certain feisty charm for a racist. Not to mention all those great dead-animal stories.”
“What if I don’t like adventure?
Then cultivate a taste for it. Take a chance. That’s how you grow.”
“Well, get used to it, the whole world is nuts.”
“Only there's two sides to every story, you know. You just remember that.”
“Eventually, I reached the other side of the chasm and understood the differences between the two men. I no longer hated Daddy: he had been a shitty father and a shitty husband - a man who's made two bad choices based on lust and coveting and then been too weak either to live with them or undo them. But he had not been a rapist.”
“Just don't ever let it happen to you, Dolores. Let people just shit all over you. Don't you ever become some man's personal toilet that way I did.”
“I don't want to hurt you but I will if I have too - Tally Youngblood”
“Hunting humans for sport? Eating them?" the bitterness in his voice cut through me. "Yeah, I caught that part."
"That doesn't have anything to do with you?
He lifted his eyes, gaze shuttered. "No?"
"Not unless being a werewolf transforms you into a wolf AND a redneck moron.”
“Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!
The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand
and asshole holy!
Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is
holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an
angel!
The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman is
holy as you my soul are holy!
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is
holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!
Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy
Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cas-
sady holy the unknown buggered and suffering
beggars holy the hideous human angels!
Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks
of the grandfathers of Kansas!
Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop
apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana
hipsters peace & junk & drums!
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy
the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the
mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!
Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the
middle class! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebell-
ion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!
Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria &
Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow
Holy Istanbul!
Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the
clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy
the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!
Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the
locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucina-
tions holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the
abyss!
Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours!
bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent
kindness of the soul!”
“Alone, there is only the person inside. I've grown to like her better than the stuck-up husk of me. Alone, there is no perfect daughter, no gifted high school junior, no Kristina Georgia Snow. There is only Bree." (Ellen Hopkins)”
“doing something constructive at once is better than figuring out the best thing to do hours later.”
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