Quotes from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“From a distance,' he says, 'my car looks just like every other car on the freeway, and Sarah Byrnes looks just like the rest of us. And if she's going to get help, she'll get it from herself or she'll get it from us. Let me tell you why I brought this up. Because the other day when I saw how hard it was for Mobe to go to the hospital to see her, I was embarrassed that I didn't know her better, that I ever laughed at one joke about her. I was embarrassed that I let some kid go to school with me for twelve years and turned my back on pain that must be unbearable. I was embarrassed that I haven't found a way to include her somehow the way Mobe has.'

Jesus. I feel tears welling up, and I see them running down Ellerby's cheeks. Lemry better get a handle on this class before it turns into some kind of therapy group.

So,' Lemry says quietly, 'your subject will be the juxtaposition of man and God in the universe?'

Ellerby shakes his head. 'My subject will be shame.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“It's a scary thing; moving on. Part of me wishes life were more predictable and part of me is excited that it's not. I think it's impossible to tell the good things from the bad things while they're happening.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“I think most of us tell ourselves we don't want what we think we can't have just to make life bearable.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“Once a thing is known,it can't be UNknown.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“ And I think if you're going to be with somebody, you owe it to them to show yourself. ”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“ No amount of effort could have stopped that, because our points of view - the way we perceive things - are inextricably linked to our beliefs, ... ,our beliefs color what we see. ”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“Well, let me make something perfectly clear (as Richard Nixon says on those old news clips about the Watergate scandal, right before he's about to fill the room with fog)I am not immortal. I've spent more than ten hours in the psych ward with Sarah Byrnes--really and truly the toughest person in our solar system--and I'll tell you what, if life can shoot Sarah Byrnes ot of the sky, it can nail me blindfolded.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“ I believe there is important shit to be dealt with. ”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“These kids up here, they act like the toughest kids in in the world, just like me, but this is the first time I've ever seen under that toughness--in anybody else or in me. I'm really scared, because if I'm going to have a life, I'm going to have to act different, and I don't know if I can.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“He doesn't believe butt time on planet Earth doesn't neccessarily makes you wise.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“ The longer I wait the more reasons I can think of why it means something other than what I thought it meant when I first read it. ”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“It's a scary thing, moving on. Part of me wishes life were more predictable and part of me is excited that it's not. I think it's impossible to tell the good things from the bad things while they're happening. Once I thought being a fat kid was the worst thing that could possibly be, but if I hadn't been fat I would never have known Sarah Byrnes--I mean Sarah--and that would have been a true tragedy in my life. And what is a worse thing than living like she lived for all those years? Nothing I can think of, but someday some kid in a group home somewhere in Kansas--chronicled in LIFE magazine more than five years ago--may be touched by her courage, and I guarantee that will change his or her life forever.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“Sometimes I wish I could have religion their way. You know, no responsibilities in life but to cut down people who don’t think the way you do.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“She’s been around all my life and I’ve done nothing; stayed as far from her as I could because I don’t like thinking about her pain. But that’s chicken shit, because once a thing is known, it can’t be unknown.” He sits back and folds his hands”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“I figure if those things were in God's jurisdiction, he'd do something different about them. But they aren't. Those are in our jurisdiction.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“It wasn’t a very Christian thing to do, that’s all.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“that’s where God watches us from: from a distance.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“A man described by authorities as one evolutionary step above a banana slug has recently admitted to having been locked in the Sacajawea Junior High biology lab over a long weekend nearly sixteen years ago when he fell asleep and was mistaken as a cadaver. Though the man is incapable of human speech, he was able, over a period of weeks, to chisel out his story in hieroglyphics on the bathroom wall of the insane asylum where he now resides. He claims that toward the end of the second day of his accidental captivity, he got downright lonely and sought companionship at his own intellectual level. He found that companionship in a petri dish.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“According to the man, who identified himself as Morton Thornton, the night got real long and by midnight, he was darn well wed to one of the lovelier inhabitants of the dish, a comely middle-aged amoeba of unknown parentage named Rita. When he was rescued on the morning of the following day, Morton plumb forgot about his single-celled nuptials and went back to his daytime job tasting the contents of open pop bottles for backwash and cigarette butts. Only sixteen years later, when a brilliant Sacajawea Junior High roving reporter—who shall remain nameless—discovered the product of this union lurking among us right here at Sac Junior High, was Morton’s long-held secret discovered. “This intrepid reporter was present three weeks into Dale Thornton’s third try at seventh grade, when the young Einstein bet this reporter and several other members of the class that he could keep a wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth from the beginning of fifth period Social Studies until the bell. The dumb jerk only lasted twenty minutes, after which he sprinted from the room, not to be seen for the rest of the day. When he returned on the following morning, he told Mr. Getz he had suddenly become ill and had to go home, but without a written excuse (he probably didn’t have a rock big enough for his dad to chisel it on) he was sent to the office. The principal, whose intellectual capacities lie only fractions of an IQ point above Dale’s, believed his lame story, and Dale was readmitted to class. Our dauntless reporter, however, smelled a larger story, recognizing that for a person to attempt this in the first place, even his genes would have to be dumber than dirt. With a zeal rivaled only by Alex Haley’s relentless search for Kunta Kinte, he dived into Dale’s seamy background, where he discovered the above story to be absolutely true and correct. Further developments will appear in this newspaper as they unfold.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“I think most of us tell ourselves we don’t want what we think we can’t have just to make life bearable.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“He goes for people’s open wounds, then brings God in with air support. You have to agree, there’s a certain cowardice to that approach.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“What I hope we can learn is to be aware of how our beliefs color what we see.” I wanted to tell Brittain that Lemry was trying”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“Taking on someone else’s monsters will kill you.” He”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“Man with Brain the Size of Tic Tac Mates with Amoeba Couple gives birth to giant adjusto; names him Dale”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“Local Teen Adopted Finds Adoptive Family Within 24 Hours of 18th Birthday The final chapter of a family tragedy was written yesterday at the county courthouse when Cynthia and Tom Lemry signed formal adoption papers, gaining custody of Sarah Byrnes less than 24 hours before her 18th birthday. Local readers will remember Ms. Byrnes as the youngster whose face and hands were purposely burned on a hot wood stove by her father 15 years ago. The incident came to light this past February after Virgil Byrnes assaulted another teenager, 18-year-old Eric Calhoune, with a hunting knife. “Better late than never,” said Cynthia Lemry, a local high school teacher and swimming coach, in a statement to the press. “If someone had stepped up for this young lady a long time ago, years of heartache could have been avoided. She’s a remarkable human being, and we’re honored to have her in our family.” “I guess they’re just in the nick of time to pay my college tuition,” the new Sarah Lemry said with a smile. Also attending the ceremony were Eric Calhoune, the victim of Virgil Byrnes’s attack; Sandy Calhoune, the boy’s mother and a frequent columnist for this newspaper; Carver Milddleton, who served time on an assault charge against Virgil Byrnes in a related incident; the Reverend John Ellerby, controversial Episcopalian minister whose support of female clergy and full homosexual rights has frequently focused a spotlight on him in his 15-year stay at St. Mark’s; and his son, Steve Ellerby, who describes himself as “a controversial Episcopalian preacher’s kid.” Sarah Lemry confirmed that following the burning 15 years ago, her father refused her opportunities for reconstructive surgery, saying her condition would teach her to “be tough.” She refused comment on further torturous physical abuse allegations, for which, among other charges, Byrnes has been found guilty in superior court and sentenced to more than 20 years in the state penitentiary at Walla Walla. When asked if she would now seek the reconstructive surgery she was so long denied, Sarah Lemry again smiled and said, “I don’t know. It’d be a shame to change just when I’m getting used to it.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“Of all my dysfunctional behaviors, she hates me putting empty containers back where they don’t belong. “I don’t care if you weigh seven hundred pounds the rest of your life and don’t stop picking your nose till you’re forty,” she told me once, “but if you put one more empty container anywhere but in the garbage, I’ll have you put to sleep.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“I think this ‘When does life begin’ argument is kind of cute, but it’s dead end. If we let it go long enough somebody will get punched in the nose, or Brittain will have a coronary incident. No offense, Sally, but most of the right-to-lifers I know—and I know a lot of them because they call at our house pretty regularly to say how much they hate my dad—get all wrapped up with life in the womb, and life after death, for that matter, but they don’t give a rip about life after birth. All you have to do is look around to see we’ve got big trouble in that area. People are starving to death all over the world. Their lives are spent trying to get something into their bellies, which they never get, and then they die. And to tell you the truth, the people who seem willing to fight to the death, or who are at least willing to carry a poster in front of the Deaconess clinic, are politically against giving them anything. The second they’re born, they’re on their own.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

“our points of view—the way we perceive things—are inextricably linked to our beliefs. If”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

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