“A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart.”
“That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.”
“Everything is funnier in retrospect, funnier and prettier and cooler. You can laugh at anything from far enough away.”
“I'm sorry if this all seems a little rushed and desperate. It is.”
“A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart."
— Chuck Palahniuk, Stranger Than Fiction”
“So this is why I write. Because most times, your life isn’t funny the first time through. Most times, you can hardly stand it.
That’s why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. And writing makes you look back. Because since you can’t control life, at least you can control your version.”
“Scratching Yogi's ears Michelle says 'That's just part of his job, the comforting. That's what I mean by the bhatisvata. That he's more concerned with comforting and helping, even more than his own well-being." This is a trait that more "people" should encompass.”
“all my books are about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people.”
“The French philosopher Jacques Derrida likens writing fiction to a software code that operates in the hardware of your mind. Stringing together separate macros that, combined, will create a reaction.”
“Me encantaría creer en un mundo invisible. Eso destruiría todo el sufrimiento y la presión del mundo físico. Pero también negaría el valor del dinero que tengo en el banco, de mi casa que no está nada mal y de todo mi esfuerzo. Todos nuestros problemas y todo lo bueno que nos pasa podrían desdeñarse simplemente porque no son más reales que las escenas de un libro o una película. Un mundo eterno e invisible convertiría el nuestro en una ilusión.”
“Slang is the writer's palette of colors.”
“So this is why I write. Because most times, your life isn’t funny the first time through. Most times, you can hardly stand it.”
“Nobody used to look at George Washington, with his wooden teeth, in his powdered wig, and say, Fashion Victim.”
“That’s why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. And writing makes you look back. Because since you can’t control life, at least you can control your version.”
“Why are you alone? I mean, we are all alone. Aloneness is... that´s life. It´s the quality of our aloneness that matters.”
“Solitude is a natural place for a writer to be.”
“The problem with proximity friends is, they move away. They quit or get fired.”
“Friendship is what really resolves and mitigates loneliness while not compromising the self in the way that love does, romantic love does.”
“American coffee can be a pale solution served at a temperature of 100
degrees centigrade in plastic thermos cups, usually obligatory in railroad
stations for purposes of genocide, whereas coffee made with an American
percolator, such as you find in private houses or in humble luncheonettes,
served with eggs and bacon, is delicious, fragrant, goes down like pure
spring water, and afterwards causes severe palpitations, because one cup
contains more caffeine than four espressos.”
“Ever the charmer, eh, Braden? (Sin)
Hold your tongue, Sin. (Braden)
I would, but with my luck, one of your giant Scottish bugs would land on it. Besides, it makes my hand wet and pruney when I do that. (Sin)”
“When Neil Armstrong took his small step from Apollo 11 and looked around, he probably thought, Wow, sort of like Iceland—even though the moon was nothing like Iceland. But then, he was a tourist, and a tourist can’t help but have a distorted opinion of a place: he meets unrepresentative people, has unrepresentative experiences, and runs around imposing upon the place the fantastic mental pictures he had in his head when he got there. When Iceland became a tourist in global high finance it had the same problem as Neil Armstrong.”
“Asking himself how this had happened and what could be done about it, Peter came to understand that the roots of Western technological achievement lay in the freeing of men’s minds. He grasped that it had been the Renaissance and the Reformation, neither of which had ever come to Russia, which had broken the bonds of the medieval church and created an environment where independent philosophical and scientific inquiry as well as wide-ranging commercial enterprise could flourish. He knew that these bonds of religious orthodoxy still existed in Russia, reinforced by peasant folkways and traditions which had endured for centuries. Grimly, Peter resolved to break these bonds on his return.”
“Nookie.” I giggle because the word itself is funny but hearing her say it makes it even more so. “I’m going to give you some advice because you’re still a new wife—and because my son can be a little shit at times. I know; I’m his mum.” She looks around as though she’s about to reveal top-secret information. “Nookie equals power and there’s a reason he wants it from you all the time. It levels the playing field. Don’t like something he’s doing? Take the nookie away. Get the results you want. Need him to see things your way but he refuses? Withhold the nookie and he’ll make the fastest attitude adjustment you’ve ever seen. Want your husband to retire because he’s going to work himself into an early grave and miss his grandchildren growing up the way he missed his kids? Close the gates of nookie and get your husband home with you instead of burying him. That’s how you work it, darling. You use the power of the nookie to get the results you want.”
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