“As the components of your life are stripped away, after all the ambitions and hopes vaporize, you reach a self-reflective starkness-- the repetitious plucking of a single overwound string.”
― Arthur Nersesian, quote from The Fuck-Up
“Perhaps the price of comfort is that life passes more rapidly. But for anyone who has lived in uneasiness, even for a short, memorable duration, it's a trade-off that will gladly be made.”
― Arthur Nersesian, quote from The Fuck-Up
“My last chance had vanished into itself like a snail coiling up into his shell.
Insidiously I had lost my grip, and now this was it. I thought all this without much emotion. I really didn't care anymore. I couldn't hang on anymore. I didn't have the guts to kill myself, but I didn't want it to continue. I walked a couple of blocks, empty, listless, and wished I could cry.
...The diabolic hope, the purposeful pulsing of blood, the flight into coherence allowed for some rationalizing an afterlife. A new theology was evolving, one that had a faith-in-death clause. It was evolved when I kicked a dead waterbug on the pavement. It was dried out, hollowed, emptied, like some kind of shell. Maybe, I thought, its body is a shell, maybe all bodies are shells. We hatch and die. Our spirit or something like that is the yoke: it lives the real life, the true life.
It wasn't comforting.”
― Arthur Nersesian, quote from The Fuck-Up
“Some of the more industrious ones were washing the windshields of cars that had been trapped by the red light. I used to see them from inside cars and think they brought it on themselves, and they probably did but now it didn't make a difference. I went over to the fire and warmed my hands with the group. I looked at their faces: idiots, criminals, retards, schizophrenics, paranoids, rejects, fuck-ups, broken-down failures. Alone, once children, never asked to be put on this earth, they ended up as jurors. Their lives were the verdict: the system, the man, something had failed.”
― Arthur Nersesian, quote from The Fuck-Up
“When I was in my teens, I made an appraisal of how comfortable my life could turn out when I became the age I am now. Because of a mechanical failure, the prediction was inexact.”
― Arthur Nersesian, quote from The Fuck-Up
“In Brooklyn I am content, the closest we can come to a sustained happiness.”
― Arthur Nersesian, quote from The Fuck-Up
“Once, as a teenager, I had believed that people could change themselves. Finally I realized that all one could ever hope was understanding one's filthy self better.”
― Arthur Nersesian, quote from The Fuck-Up
“I had grazed along the surface of her actions and made deep judgments. Rejecting someone because you couldn't understand their love, that was a new one. The more I thought about it the longer the shadow of doubt stretched over all my conclusions. More often than not, things were as they seemed. But as I stared at her, she wasn't as bad looking as I had once thought. I realized how all this time I had seen her the wrong way, and how one's character affects one's appearance. Although she wasn't my type she was attractive. As I thought about her - the vulnerable intelligence, the violent honesty, and the fact that in the entire city she was the only one who took me in and fed me - she became more and more irresistible. Baited by an obscure beauty, trapped by an intense sorrow - all prior definitions had been overruled: this was love.”
― Arthur Nersesian, quote from The Fuck-Up
Arthur Nersesian
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“You doubt because you love truth.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith
“Who or what is an Ipod?”
― Alex Flinn, quote from A Kiss in Time
“Oh, my love,” Erienne breathed as he pressed his lips to her brow, “I was afraid you would come, and yet I hoped you would.”
Light kisses rained upon her cheek and brow as he held her close, savoring the nearness of her while he could. “I would have come sooner had I known where they had taken you. I had not expected this of your father, but he will answer. I promise you that.”
Erienne shook her head and replied in the same muted tone. “He is not my real father.”
Christopher held her away, looking down at her wonderingly. “What is this?”
“My mother married an Irish rebel and got with child before he was hanged. Avery married her, knowing the facts, but he never told her that it was he who had given the final orders to hang my father.”
Christopher gently brushed a tumbled curl from off her cheek. “I knew you were too beautiful to be kin to him.”
-Erienne & Christopher”
― Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, quote from A Rose in Winter
“You came after all, Z. Glad you made the party. (Acheron)
What the hell? I didn’t have anything better to do. Figured I might as well come kick ass and take names. Not that I really give a damn about their names. I’m just in it for the bloodlust. (Zarek)”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, quote from Kiss of the Night
“In the checkered area of human experience the seasons are all mingled as in the golden age: fruit and blossom hang together; in the same moment the sickle is reaping and the seed is sprinkled; one tends the green cluster and another treads the winepress. Nay, in each of our lives harvest and spring-time are continually one, until himself gathers us and sows us anew in his invisible fields.”
― George Eliot, quote from Daniel Deronda
The Bean Trees
Wicked Lovely
War and Peace
Coraline
Far from the Madding...
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