
Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let’s not forget this.

We are unusual and tragic and alive.

I will not wait to love as best as I can. We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is no way to live, to wait to love.

But everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.

Still though, I think if you're not self-obsessed, you're probably boring.

All I ever wanted was to know what to do.

You invite things to happen. You open the door. You inhale. And if you inhale the chaos, you give the chaos, the chaos gives back.

We lose weeks like buttons, like pencils.

Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot.

We see the beauty within and cannot say no.

His lies were so exquisite I almost wept.

The only infallible truth of our lives is that everything we love in life will be taken from us.

It is no way to live, to wait to love.

Why do you want to be on The Real World? -Because I want everyone to witness my youth Why? -Isn't it gorgeous?

Once a year, she remembers that she is insignificant. Then she forgets agains, because more than she is insignificant, she is forgetful.

All we really want is for no one to have a boring life, to be impressive, so we can be impressed. ~ on the friends we choose.

If you don't want anyone to know about your existence, you might as well kill yourself. You're taking up space, air.

I hung up the phone, jubilant, and threw myself into a wall, then pretended to be getting electrocuted. I do this when I'm very happy.

I see colors like you hear jet planes.

Goddamn sometimes I only want this feeling to stay and last.

Why did we do that to Pluto? We had it good with Pluto.

Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves.

And there is a chance that everything we did was incorrect, but stasis is itself criminal for those with the means to move, and the means to weave communion between people.

Better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than in the middle of some ladder you don’t, right?

When there is pleasure, there is often abandon, and mistakes are made.

I was feeling everything too much. Everything pulled at my eyes. I spent hours floating in pools.

Be strong, be brave, be true. Endure.

Thank you," he says. "Thank who?" "I don't know. You?" "No, not me. Jesus." "Thank you, Jesus?" "Yes, Toph, Jesus died for your Christmas fun.

I have no idea how people function without near-constant internal chaos. I'd lose my mind.

3. There are bears and there are small dogs. Be strong like bear! If they take out your teeth, sit on the dogs. Bears always forget they can just sit on the dogs. Sit on the dogs.

Pain comes at me and I take it, chew it for a few minutes, and spit it back out. It's just not my thing anymore.

Here I am Rock You Like a Hurricane.

How had this happened? Everyone in the world knew more than us, about everything, and this I hated then found hugely comforting.

It all meant something. Until it didn't.

Love is implicit in every connection. It should be. Thus when absent it makes us insane. (You Shall Know Our Velocity)

You sit at a desk twelve hours a day and you have nothing to show for it except some numbers that won't exist or be remembered in a week. You're leaving no evidence you lived. There's no proof.

This boy thinks I am not of his species, that I am some other kind of creature, one that can be crushed under the weight of a phone book. The pain is not great, but the symbolism is disagreeable.

We are all feeding from each other, all the time, every day.

My feeling is that if you're not self-obsessed you're probably boring.

Yes, a dark time passed over this land, but now there is something like light.

You can't ever guess at life, at pain. All pain is real, and all pain is personal. It's the most personal thing we have. It eats each of us differently.

We would oppose the turning of the planet and refuse the setting of the sun.

But what I really want is to just swim around in a warm baby pool of these friends, jump in their dry leaf pile-to rub them all over myself, without words and clothes.

I had the sensation that I might always be running like this, that I would always have to run, and that I would always be able to run.

Good artists exist in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.

He must trust, and he must have faith. And so he builds, because what is building, and rebuilding and rebuilding again, but an act of faith?

He wanted to fly in lightweight contraptions with her.

Why do we pursue information that we know will never leave our heads?

What is building, and rebuilding and rebuilding again, but an act of faith?

But that in any city, in any cluster of people, there a few people who are awake at this hour, who are both awake and dancing, and it’s here that we need to be.

Every time my brain parks the car neatly in the driveway, my mouth drives through the back of the garage.

Morning comes like a scream through a pinhole.

You're breaking out of character, again.

My head was a condemned church with a ceiling of bats, but I swung from this dark mood to euphoria when I thought about leaving.

Maybe he was more than the sum of his broken parts.

This is a terrible way to think. It is no way to live, to wait to love.

ALL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN.

Everyone in the life before was cranky, I think, because they just wanted to know. --After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned

If your hand doesn't work for it, your heart doesn't feel sorry for it.

They were so in love with the world, and so disappointed in every aspect of it.

Think too much and you know you are nothing. Think just enough and you know you are small, but important to some. That's the best you can do.

It was not knowing that was the seed of madness, loneliness, suspicion, fear.

Your life has been lived a hundred times. A thousand times. It's not all that great, really. Don't take it so seriously. Don't handle it so delicately.

Again the greatest use of a human was to be useful. Not to consume, not to watch, but to do something for someone else that improved their life, even for a few minutes.

If you think I'm annoying and preachy now, you should have known me in grade school.

I lost someone very close to me and afterward I believed I could have saved him had I been a better friend to him. But everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.

My voice and movements are restricted by the things I own.

First of all, I know it’s all people like you. And that’s what’s so scary. Individually you don’t know what you’re doing collectively.

It only takes one person, one small act of stepping from the dark to the light.

Here is a drawing of a stapler:

We were fools and now we were driving to our deaths in a rental car. Janet Jackson was tinkling from the speakers, asking what we had done for her as of late

This was a new skill she'd acquired, the ability to look, to the outside world, utterly serene and even cheerful, while, in her skull, all was chaos.

Then he got more books. He saved all the books.

Hello Frances, I have just been to health class, and I was wondering how your feminine parts were developing.

No. There is no balance, and no retribution, and no rules. The rules and balances you blather about are hopeful creations of a man fearing death.

(...) my problem with paper is that all communication dies with it. It holds no possibility of continuity.

But that's one lifetime." Yeah." But while doing that one I'd want to be able to have done other stuff. Whole other lives- the one where I sail-" I know, on a boat you made yourself.

You’re like part human, part rainbow.

The raising of a child is the building of a cathedral. You can't cut corners.

Nothing again. No one is listening. No one is waiting to hear the kicking of a man above. It is unexpected. You have no ears for someone like me.

She pulls away, pats me on the shoulder with three mini-pats, like those used to pet reptiles.

When we pass by another person without telling them we love them it’s cruel and wrong and we all know this.

There has not been a beautiful death in the history of mankind.

I am too fucking fragile. I hate being fragile.

She felt some measure of relief knowing that in the very least, on the open road she would have some time to think.

The air is like being wanted, we say, and they nod approvingly. The air is like getting older, they say, and they touch our arms gently.

Recently, I've discovered Radiohead and find them to be quite good. So clearly, I'm some kind of musical retard. (Jonathan Ames, Middle-American Gothic)

I am the Olympics.

The issue is complex, but like many matters in Sudan, it is not as complex as Khartoum would want the west to believe.

The peculiar problem of constant connectivity: any silence of more than a few hours provokes apocalyptic thoughts.

Stasis is itself criminal for those with the means to move.

I often cannot believe the things I do.

SECRETS ARE LIES SHARING IS CARING PRIVACY IS THEFT

There is no faith like the faith of a builder of homes in coastal Louisiana

The Earth is an animal that shakes off its fleas when they dig too deep, bite too hard.

People don't like to be kept away from what they want. Especially when it appears within their reach. It makes one doubly angry.

But without William K, I would have forgotten that I had not been born on this journey. That I had lived before this.

The Earth is an animal that shakes off its fleas when they dig too deep, bite too hard. It shifts and our cities fall; it sighs and the coasts are overtaken.

It was as if, for a moment, she thought Mae was one kind of person, but now, knowing she was another, she could part with her, she could give her back to the world.

Suffering is only suffering if it's done in silence, in solitude. Pain experienced in public, in view of loving millions, was no longer pain. It was communion.