Kevin Wilson · 224 pages
Rating: (1.9K votes)
“Don't you see? The things we once loved do not change, only our belief in them... You are left with the only things that any of us have in the end. The things we keep inside of ourselves, that grow out of us, that tell us who we are.”
― Kevin Wilson, quote from Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories
“She's got a way of making a man feel guilty for certain things he'd never feel bad about on his own, like watching someone shoot himself in the face.”
― Kevin Wilson, quote from Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories
“She is prettier than her picture had prepared me for, blond curls, big blue eyes, like a fake child that someone would make in order to convince people to have children.”
― Kevin Wilson, quote from Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories
“Up to this point, all I knew were beaten paths, tattooed with footprints, and I had come to the understanding that they were not much fun to travel because so many people were waiting for you at the end, wondering what took you so long.”
― Kevin Wilson, quote from Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories
“The most likely victim of spontaneous human combustion is a solitary woman, 75 percent of all known cases of SHC are women. I tell her that some people believe that arsonist poltergeists are to blame, that the spirits of firestarters roam the cities setting souls on fire.”
― Kevin Wilson, quote from Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories
“Anytime in my life when I see an accumulation of items, a title of ownership in my name, I feel my insides swell. What am I going to do with all of this? Where am I going to put it? So I get rid of it. And I feel calm again. I am a library patron, a renter without an option to buy, a Salvation Arm donator, a spring cleaner of the highest order.
Why then, why in the world, do I work here, surrounded by all of this? It's easy enough. This is art, and it is not mine. I am only looking after it while the real owners are away. Most of all, I suppose, although I may not want things, I don't mind touching them for a while.”
― Kevin Wilson, quote from Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories
“«Silenzio in aula!» strillò il Coniglio Bianco con voce stridula.
«Mozzatele il capo!» strillò la Regina.
Il Re inforcò gli occhiali e si guardò intorno inquieto, per scoprire chi aveva parlato. La Regina gli diede di gomito e fece un cenno nella mia direzione.
«Tu, laggiù!» disse il Re. «Dovrai parlare molto presto, miss, miss...»
«Next» interloquì Coniglio Bianco dopo aver consultato la sua pergamena.
«Come?» replicò il Re un po' confuso. «Abbiamo già finito?»
«No, Vostra Maestà» rispose paziente il Coniglio Bianco «il suo nome è Next. Thursday Next».
«E magari pensi di essere spiritosa?»”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Well of Lost Plots
“Try to live. Try to be happy. [...] Things end, people leave, and life goes on. You need the bad things to feel the good ones.”
― Elizabeth Scott, quote from Perfect You
“... She is awesomely competent without being smug. She is determined without being bossy, morally certain without being judgmental. She likes herself but is not full of herself.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Life Expectancy
“The heroin flowing through me, I thought about the last time I saw my father alive. He was drunk and overweight in a restaurant in Beverly Hills, and curling into myself on the bed I thought: What if I had done something that day? I had just sat passively in a restaurant booth as the midday light filled the half-empty dining room, pondering a decision. The decision was: should you disarm him? That was the word I remember: disarm. Should you tell him something that might not be the truth but would get the desired reaction? And what was I going to convince him of, even though it was a lie? Did it matter? Whatever it was, it would constitute a new beginning. The immediate line: You’re my father and I love you. I remember staring at the white tablecloth as I contemplated saying this. Could I actually do it? I didn’t believe it, and it wasn’t true, but I wanted it to be. For one moment, as my father ordered another vodka (it was two in the afternoon; this was his fourth) and started ranting about my mother and the slump in California real estate and how “your sisters” never called him, I realized it could actually happen, and that by saying this I would save him. I suddenly saw a future with my father. But the check came along with the drink and I was knocked out of my reverie by an argument he wanted to start and I simply stood up and walked away from the booth without looking back at him or saying goodbye and then I was standing in sunlight. Loosening my tie as a parking valet pulled up to the curb in the cream-colored 450 SL. I half smiled at the memory, for thinking that I could just let go of the damage that a father can do to a son. I never spoke to him again.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, quote from Lunar Park
“Every step outside one’s own door invites the world (perhaps even the universe),”
― Stephen King, quote from Black House
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