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If Marilyn Monroe Was Alive Right Now, What Would She Be Doing?' Clawing At The Roof Of Her Coffin.

-Chuck Palahniuk

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If Marilyn Monroe Was

Chuck Palahniuk

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If Marilyn Monroe Was Alive Right Now, What Would She Be Doing?' Clawing At The Roof Of Her Coffin.

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The Laws That Keep Us Safe, These Same Laws Condemn Us To Boredom.

The More Things You Own, The More They Own You.

Rant Casey Used To Say, "no Matter What Happens, It's Always Now..." Talk About Cryptic. I Think What Rant Meant Was, We Live In The Present Moment Of Reality, And No Matter What's Come Before, No Matter How Much We Loved A Person Or A Dog, When It Attacks Us We'll React To That Moment Of Danger.

I'm Always Trying To Reach A Transcendent Point, A Romantic Point, But Reach It In A Really Unconventional Way, A Really Profane Way. To Get To That Romantic, Touching, Heartbreaking Place, But Through A Lot Of Acts Of Profanity.

The Trick To Forgetting The Big Picture Is To Look At Everything Close-up. The Shortcut To Closing A Door Is To Bury Yourself In The Details. This Is How We Must Look To God. As If Everything's Fine.

Your Birth Is A Mistake You'll Spend Your Whole Life Trying To Correct.

Maybe It's Our Sins That Give God Consolation When He Finally Has To Give Us Cancer.

I Told Him To Buy Land, My Mum Says, They’re Not Making It Anymore.

The Same Architect Who Designed The Seattle Fair's Futuristic Science Center, With Its Lacy Gothic Arches And Spires, Minoru Yamasaki, Was Hired To Design The Twin Towers Of The World Trade Center. Seattle Had Promised Fairgoers A Glimpse Of The World That Would Exist In 2001. That Year Eventually Unfolded As Something Less Than The Dream We'd Imagined.

Why Should I Believe Any Of This?' It Happens That Fast. I Say, Because I Think I Like You. Marla Says, 'not Love?' This Is A Cheesy Enough Moment, I Say. Don't Push It.

New Carpet Will Exude Poisonous Formaldehyde For Up To Two Years After It'd Been Laid. I Know The Feeling.

Your Past Is Just A Story. And Once You Realize This It Has No Power Over You.

Her Voice Makes Me Think Of Her Mouth Makes Me Think Of Her Breath Makes Me Think Of Her Breasts.

Anybody's True Nature Is Bullshit. There Is No Human Soul. Emotion Is Bullshit. Love Is Bullshit.

Everybody Looks A Little Crazy If You're Looking Close Enough And If You Can't Look That Close, Then You Don't Really Love Them.

I Have A Lot Of Money.

I Could Imagine Myself Becoming One Of Marla's Stories.

Maybe We Have To Break Everything To Make Something Better Out Of Ourselves.

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Telling Some Stories, Miss Leroy Says, Is Committing Suicide.

No Matter How Careful You Are, There's Going To Be The Sense You Missed Something, The Collapsed Feeling Under Your Skin That You Didn't Experience It All. There's That Fallen Heart Feeling That You Rushed Right Through The Moments Where You Should've Been Paying Attention. Well, Get Used To That Feeling. That's How Your Whole Life Will Feel Some Day.

After You Hear Even The Shortest Great Story, It Should Fill You With A Little Bit Of Fear.

Put A Gun To My Head And Paint The Wall With My Brains.

The Only Thing I Know Is Everything You Love Will Die.

Things You Love

Here Are The Shadows Left Behind By A Thousand Moments, A Thousand Moods, Of Needs Traced Here On The Wall By Men Who Are Gone. Here Is The Record Of Their Being Here.

Nothing Is Static. Even The Mona Lisa Is Falling Apart. Since Fight Club, I Can Wiggle Half The Teeth In My Jaw. Maybe Self-improvement Isn't The Answer. Maybe Self-destruction Is The Answer.

Ask Yourself: What Did I Eat For Breakfast Today? What Did I Eat For Dinner Last Night? You See How Fast Reality Fades Away?

Ideas Come At Any Moment -- Except When You Demand Them. Most Ideas Come While I'm Physically Active, At The Gym, With Friends, Gardening, So I Always Carry Pen And Paper. My First Draft Is Always Written In Longhand. But Once The First Dozen Chapters, More Like Short Stories, Are Written, Then Momentum Builds Until I Can't Leave The Project Until It's Done.

I'm Really Glad That I Made A Lot Of Mistakes, Poorly Chose My Friends Throughout My Twenties, And Didn't Have A Rocket Trajectory That Set Me On One Path Without Making Any Mistakes Or Having Any Setbacks. The Older I Get, The More I Realize That It's All Of These Failed, Horrible Things From My Past, And The Stories That They Generated, That Are The Things I Will Draw On For The Rest Of My Life.

The Things You Used To Own, Now They Own You.

Fight Club Book

There's No Way You Can Get The Past Right. You Can Pretend. You Can Delude Yourself, But You Can't Re-create What's Over.

We Are A Nation Of Physical Animals Who Have Forgotten How Much We Enjoy Being That. We Are Cushioned By This Kind Of Make-believe, Unreal World And Have No Idea What We Can Survive Because We Are Never Challenged Or Tested.

The Answer Is There Is No Answer.

It's Only In Drugs Or Death We'll See Anything New, And Death Is Just Too Controlling.

Your Folks Are God, You Love Them And You Want To Make Them Happy But You Still Want To Make Up Your Own Rules.

A Short Story Is Something That You Can Hold In Your Mind. You Can Really Analyze How The Entire Thing Works, Like A Machine

Don't Do This. I Love You. Don't Shut Me Out.

Deliver Me From Swedish Furniture. Deliver Me From Clever Art. And The Phone Rang And Tyler Answered. "if You Don't Know What You Want," The Doorman Said, "you End Up With A Lot You Don't." May I Never Be Complete. May I Never Be Content. May I Never Be Perfect. Deliver Me, Tyler, From Being Perfect And Complete.

No Matter What Else You Came Up Against, If You Could Smile And Laugh While A Monkey Did You With Chestnuts In A Dank Concrete Basement While Somebody Took Pictures, Well, Any Other Situation Would Be A Piece Of Cake

We Can Spend Our Lives Letting The World Tell Us Who We Are…or We Can Decide For Ourselves.

I'm Giving You My Life To Prove To Myself I Can, I Really Can Love Somebody. Even When I'm Not Getting Paid, I Can Give Love And Happiness And Charm. You See, I Can Handle The Baby Food And The Not Talking And Being Homeless And Invisible, But I Have To Know That I Can Love Somebody. Completely And Totally, Permanently And Without Hope Of Reward, Just As An Act Of Will, I Will Love Somebody.

We All Die. The Goal Isn't To Live Forever, The Goal Is To Create Something That Will.

The Big Reason Why Folks Leave A Small Town,' Rant Used To Say, 'is So They Can Moon Over The Idea Of Going Back. And The Reason They Stay Put Is So They Can Moon About Getting Out.' Rant Meant That No One Is Happy, Anywhere.

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Forget The Past

Dude, The Place Is Filling Up," I Say. "it Feels Like We're Living In The Bottom Half Of An Hourglass." Like Somehow We're Running Out Of Time.

You Don’t Care Where I Live Or How I Feel, Or What I Eat Or How I Feed My Kids Or How I Pay The Doctor If I Get Sick, And Yes I Am Stupid And Bored And Weak, But I Am Still Your Responsibility.

This Wasn't Any Mere Song And Dance; Here Was A Bold, Blaring Declaration Howling Itself Into The Empty Face Of Death.

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You're Doomed At Being You.

The Most Boring Scenes Are The Scenes Where A Character Is Alone.

I Love Everything About Tyler Durden, His Courage And His Smarts. His Nerve. Tyler Is Funny And Charming And Forceful And Independent, And Men Look Up To Him And Expect Him To Change Their World. Tyler Is Capable And Free, And I Am Not.

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You're Not Getting This Back You Know. Consider It An Asshole Tax.

Make Me Into Anything, But Just Love Me.

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Nothing Happened, And Nothing Kept Happening.

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If Your Body Is A Temple, You Can Pile Up Too Much Deferred Maintenance. If Your Body Is A Temple, Mine Was A Real Fixer-upper.

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Because Everything Up To Now Is A Story And Everything After Now Is A Story.

What Would Tyler Durden Do?

With The Novels, I Usually Start From Something In My Own Life That I Can't Resolve, So I Turn It Into A Metaphor And For Months Or Sometimes Years I'll Exhaust All Of My Emotional Reaction To This Issue By Making It Enormous On The Page.

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Every Stage Of Life Has Its Own Form Of Power, And We're Always Sort Of Terrified As To Whether We Can Make The Jump To The Next Form Of Power.

You Know, The Condom Is The Glass Slipper Of Our Generation. You Slip It On When You Meet A Stranger. You Dance All Night, Then You Throw It Away.

The Problem With Educating Stupid People Was That They Didn’t Know They Were Stupid. The Same Went For Curing Crazy People.

Those Who Remember The Past Tend To Get The Story Really Screwed Up.

We're All Going Overnight Express Delivery Straight To Hell.

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Emotionally, In Our Minds, We Get So Filled With Resentments Where We've Got A Story About Absolutely Everything.

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Let's All Embrace Someone Near Us. Pick Someone Special To You. Tell This Someone How You Feel.

I Suppose It’s Comfort, Perhaps A Sense Of Self-control, Doing Worse Things To Yourself Than The World Will Ever Dare Inflict.

In The End, It's Never What You Worry About That Gets You.

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There Are People Out There Who Will Not Read Books, But Somehow They'll Read My Books.

There Are Only Patterns. Patterns On Top Of Patterns, Patterns That Affect Other Patterns, Patterns Hidden By Patterns, Patterns Within Patterns.

It's Not Enough To Be Numbered With The Grains Of Sand On The Beach And The Stars In The Sky.

Just Let Yourself Be Broken And Humiliated. Just Your Whole Life, Keep Telling People, I'm Sorry. I'm Sorry. I'm Sorry. I'm Sorry. I'm Sorry.

The First Step To Eternal Life Is You Have To Die.

There's No Escaping Fate, It Just Keeps Going. Day And Night, The Future Just Keeps Coming At You.

You're A Product Just As Much. A Product Of A Product. The People Who Design Cars, They're Products, Your Teachers, Products. The Minister In Your Church, Another Product.

I Haven't Shoplifted Since I Was 13.

I Often Need Physical Gesture To Balance Dialogue. If I Write In Public, Every Time I Need To Know What A Character Is Doing With His Hand Or Foot, I Can Look Up And Study People And Find Compelling Gestures That I Can Harvest. Writing In Public Gives You That Access To A Junkyard Of Details All Around You.

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Because Tanning And Steroids Are Only A Problem If You Plan To Live A Long Time.

Hey, You Created Me! I Didn't Create Some Loser Alter-ego To Make Myself Feel Better. Take Some Responsibility!

Tyler And Me At The Edge Of The Roof, The Gun In My Mouth, I'm Wondering How Clean This Gun Is.

There Is A Social Contract In "fight Club" And In "choke" Where The Protagonist Has Deceived A Whole Bunch Of People. In "choke" It's All Of These People Who Think That They've Saved His Life, And Really Care About Him Because They've Embraced Him And They've Been His Saviors. In "fight Club" It's All Of These People Who Are Dying Of Various Diseases, And They Thought That Edward Norton Was Also Dying So They Allowed Him Really Strong Pent-up Emotions.

Did Perpetual Happiness In The Garden Of Eden Maybe Get So Boring That Eating The Apple Was Justified?

There's Always The Chance You Could Die Right In The Middle Of Your Life Story.

The Girls You Meet Are Never Very Far From Their Worst-case Scenario.

Worst Case Scenario

I Wanted To Destroy Everything Beautiful I'd Never Have.

I Don't Care What They Do With My Book So Long As The Flippin Check Clears.

My Stories Tend To Bring People From Isolation Into Community - With At Least One Other Person, Usually With A Whole Community Of People - So That They Find Themselves Accepted Back By A World That They Kind Of Fled From.

The Damaged Love The Damaged. True Fact.

Find Out What You're Afraid Of And Go Live There.

The Avant-garde In Every Field Consists Of The Lonely, The Friendless, The Uninvited. All Progress Is The Product Of The Unpopular.

If I Could Wake Up In A Different Place, At A Different Time, Could I Wake Up As A Different Person?

So Here I Am. This Is As Good As It Gets. Take It Or Leave It.

Good As It Gets

Stop The Excessive Shopping And Masturbation. Quit Your Job. Start A Fight. Prove You're Alive. If You Don't Claim Your Humanity, You Will Become A Statistic.

The Gyms You Go To Are Crowded With Guys Trying To Look Like Men, As If Being A Man Means Looking The Way A Sculptor Or An Art Director Says.

Still, It's Nice To Have One Person Who Knows All Your Secrets.

These Distraction-oholics. These Focus-ophobics.

Some Of Us Are Lucky Enough To Fall In Love Once Or Twice But The Luckiest Of Us Are Those Who Find That Someone They Simply Can't Live Without And Have The Pleasure Of Falling In Love With Them Day In And Day Out For The Rest Of Their Lives. Relationships Aren't About Simply Falling In Love Once And Being Done With It, They're About Loving Someone Until The End Of Your Days And Growing That Love Endlessly.

Falling In Love

Sex Pretty Much Cures Everything.

I Want My Whole Life Lined With A Topical Anesthetic.

Some Of The Best Ideas I Get Seem To Happen When I'm Doing Mindless Manual Labor Or Exercise. I'm Not Sure How That Happens, But It Leaves Me Free For Remarkable Ideas To Occur.

Marla Tells Me How In The Wild You Don't See Old Animals Because As Soon As They Age, Animals Die. If They Get Sick Or Slow Down, Something Stronger Kills Them. Animals Aren't Meant To Get Old. Marla Lies Down On Her Bed And Undoes The Tie On Her Bathrobe, And Says Our Culture Has Made Death Something Wrong. Old Animals Should Be An Unnatural Exception. Freaks.

It's Not Love Or Anything, But I Think I Like You, Too.

If Death Meant Just Leaving The Stage Long Enough To Change Costume And Come Back As A New Character, Would You Slow Down? Or Speed Up?

All The Effort In The World Won't Matter If You're Not Inspired.

Inspirational Life

Also Consider That Someday, When You’re Dead And Rotted, Kids With Their Baby Teeth Will Sit In Their Time-geography Class And Laugh About How Stupid You Were.

Unless We Have That Moment Of Chaos, Followed By The Emotional Release Of Realization, Nothing Will Be Remembered.

It’s A Fun Playtime. Please, Don’t Kill It With Big Words.

Some People Still Think Knowledge Is Power.

Knowledge Is Power

If You Don’t Claim Your Humanity, You Will Become A Statistic.

Quitting Your Job

They Should Let Some People Into The Library By Prescription Only

I'm Working Harder Than I Have Ever Worked In My Entire Life, But What The Hell, My Life Is My Job Now, And My Job Is My Life And That's The Way It Should Be.

What I'm Always Trying To Do With Every Book Is To Recreate The Effect Of The Stories We Heard As Children In Front Of Campfires And Fireplaces - The Ghost Stories That Engaged Us.

Big Brother Isn't Watching. He's Singing And Dancing. He's Pulling Rabbits Out Of A Hat. Big Brother's Busy Holding Your Attention Every Moment You're Awake. He's Making Sure You're Always Distracted. He's Making Sure You're Fully Absorbed. He's Making Sure Your Imagination Withers. Until It's As Useful As Your Appendix. He's Making Sure Your Attention Is Always Filled. And This Being Fed, It's Worse Than Being Watched. With The World Always Filling You, No One Has To Worry About What's In Your Mind. With Everyone's Imagination Atrophied, No One Will Ever Be A Threat To The World.

We Don't Have A Great War In Our Generation, Or A Great Depression, But We Do, We Have A Great War Of The Spirit. We Have A Great Revolution Against The Culture. The Great Depression Is Our Lives. We Have A Spiritual Depression.

I Believe In Something. But I Don't Believe That Anything Can Hold A Grudge For Long Enough To Condemn Its Creation To Eternal Punishment. Nobody Can Hold A Grudge That Long, Even God.

I Really Love Idiot, Enlightened Characters - These Characters Who Fail To Engage With The Drama Of Their Immediate Circumstances; They Fail To Be Reactive And Enrolled By Drama As It Happens Around Them.

Maybe Humans Are Just The Pet Alligators That God Flushed Down The Toilet.

We Live And We Die And Anything Else Is Just A Delusion.

I Don't Want To Die Without A Few Scars.

Just For The Record, The Weather Today Is Calm And Sunny, But The Air Is Full Of Bullshit.

Could You Hold The Chainsaw A Bit Closer To Your Mouth, Please?

I Used To Work In A Funeral Home To Feel Good About Myself, Just The Fact That I Was Breathing.

Being Tired Isn't The Same As Being Rich, But Most Times It's Close Enough.

I Think In A Way, You're Doomed, Once You Can Envision Something. You're Sort Of Doomed To Make It Happen. I've Found That The Moment I Can Envision Leaving A Relationship, That's Usually The Moment That The Relationship Starts To Fall Apart.

Part Of Her Doing Suicide Intervention Is My Caseworker Has To Mix Me Another Gin And Tonic.

Even If I Overcompensate, Nobody Will Ever Want Me. Not Seth. Not My Folks. You Can’t Kiss Someone Who Has No Lips. Oh, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me. I’ll Be Anybody You Want Me To Be

The Liberator Who Destroys My Property Is Fighting To Save My Spirit. The Teacher Who Clears All Possessions From My Path Will Set Me Free.

The Government Says Rant's Alive Because They Need A Villain. The Kids Say He's Alive Because They Need A Hero.

Find Value In What We've Been Taught Is Worthless.

Which Is Worse, Hell Or Nothing?

Optimism Is The First Symptom That Any Disease Is Fatal.

She's So Thin She's Either Dying Or Rich.

Hello! Look At Me. Hello! I Am So Zen. This Is Blood. This Is Nothing. Hello. Everything Is Nothing, And It's So Cool To Be Enlightened. Like Me.

History Is Nothing Except Monsters Or Victims. Or Witnesses.

It's Pathetic How We Can't Live With The Things We Can't Understand. How We Need Everything Labeled And Explained And Deconstructed.

It's Because We're So Trapped In Our Culture, In The Being Of Being Human On This Planet With The Brains We Have, And The Same Two Arms And Legs Everybody Has. We're So Trapped That Any Way We Could Imagine To Escape Would Be Just Another Part Of The Trap. Anything We Want, We're Trained To Want.

I Try To Forget About The Expectation That's Out There And The Audience Listening For The Next Thing So That I'm Not Trying To Please Them. I've Spent A Huge Amount Of Time Not Communicating With Those Folks And Denying That They Exist.

During The First World War, I Told Her, Hitler Had Been A Runner, Delivering Messages Between The German Trenches, And He Was Disgusted By Seeing His Fellow Soldiers Visit French Brothels. To Keep The Aryan Bloodlines Pure,and Prevent The Spread Of Venereal Disease, He Commissioned An Inflatable Doll That Nazi Troops Could Take Into Battle. Hitler Himself Designed The Dolls To Have Blond Hair And Large Breasts. The Allied Firebombing Of Dresden Destroyed The Factory Before The Dolls Could Ever Go Into Wide Distribution.

Everything Is Still Falling Apart.

Think Of A Rock Polisher, One Of Those Drums, Goes Round And Round, Rolls Twenty-four/seven, Full Of Water And Rocks And Gravel. Grinding It All Up. Round And Round. Polishing Those Ugly Rocks Into Gemstones. That’s The Earth. Why It Goes Around. We’re The Rocks. And What Happens To Us—the Drama And Pain And Joy And War And Sickness And Victory And Abuse—why, That’s Just The Water And Sand To Erode Us. Grind Us Down. To Polish Us Up, Nice And Bright.

Pretty Much Always. We Need To Tell The Story Of Our Life To Someone.

I Know This Because Tyler Knows This.

Fight Club Novel

Minimalism Seems Closest To The Sophisticated Storytelling Of Movies. Movies Have Really Educated Contemporary Audiences To Be The Most Intelligent, Sophisticated Audiences In History. We Don't Any Longer Need To Have The Relationship Between One Scene And The Next Explained. We Will Figure It Out Ourselves.

I've Been Choking To Death For Years. By Now This Should Be Easy.

You Are Not Special. You Are Not A Beautiful Or Unique Snowflake. You're The Same Decaying Organic Matter As Everything Else.

As An Artist You Organize Your Life So That You Get A Chance To Paint, A Window Of Time, But That's No Guarantee You'll Create Anything Worth All Your Effort. You're Always Haunt By The Idea You're Wasting Your Life.

Today Is Just One Of Those Days The Sun Comes Out To Really Humiliate You.

One Of Those Days

Daytime Television, You Can Tell Who’s Watching By The Three Kinds Of Commercials. Either It’s Clinics For Drying Out Drunks. Or It’s Law Firms Who Want To Settle Injury Suits. Or It’s Schools Offering Mail-order Vocational Degrees To Make You A Bookkeeper. A Private Detective. Or A Locksmith. If You’re Watching Daytime Television, This Is Your New Demographic. You’re A Drunk. Or A Cripple. Or An Idiot.

Discovering The 'impossible' Ending To A New Book Makes Me Sick With Joy And Relief.

You Grow Up To Become Living Proof Of Your Parents' Limitations. Their Less-than Masterpiece.

Experts In Ancient Greek Culture Say That People Back Then Didn't See Their Thoughts As Belonging To Them. When Ancient Greeks Had A Thought, It Occurred To Them As A God Or Goddess Giving An Order. Apollo Was Telling Them To Be Brave. Athena Was Telling Them To Fall In Love. Now People Hear A Commercial For Sour Cream Potato Chips And Rush Out To Buy, But Now They Call This Free Will. At Least The Ancient Greeks Were Being Honest.

Falling In Love

I Admire Addicts. In A World Where Everybody Is Waiting For Some Blind, Random Disaster Or Some Sudden Disease, The Addict Has The Comfort Of Knowing What Will Most Likely Wait For Him Down The Road. He's Taken Some Control Over His Ultimate Fate, And His Addiction Keeps The Cause Of His Death From Being A Total Surprise.

I Try To Get Centered: Watching White Moon Face The Stars Never Feel Anger Blah, Blah, Blah, The End

Some Soap Opera, You Know, Real People Pretending To Be Fake People With Made-up Problems Being Watched By Real People To Forget Their Real Problems.

I Don't Remember The Hotel Rooms Or The Airports But I Always Remember The Events.

A Child Who Is Disillusioned Abruptly, By His Peers Or Siblings, Being Ridiculed For His Faith And Imagination, May Choose Never To Believe In Anything- Tangible Or Intangible- Again. To Never Trust Or Wonder.

There's Still A Thousand Places I Haven't Gone To Die.

Reality Means You Live Until You Die. The Real Truth Is Nobody Wants Reality.

Oh Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me. I'll Be Anybody You Want Me To Be.

Hysteria Is Impossible Without An Audience. Panicking By Yourself Is The Same As Laughing Alone In An Empty Room. You Feel Really Silly.

You Hear The Best Stories From Ordinary People. That Sense Of Immediacy Is More Real To Me Than A Lot Of Writerly, Literary-type Crafted Stories. I Want That Immediacy When I Read A Novel.

Life's Greatest Comfort Is Being Able To Look Over Your Shoulder And See People Worse Off, Waiting In Line Behind You.

Waiting In Line

The Future Is Just Wasted On Some People.

Invisible Monsters

The First Time We Meet Another Person An Insidious Little Voice In Our Heads Says, "i Might Wear Eyeglasses Or Be Chunky Around The Hips Or A Girl, But At Least I'm Not Gay Or Black Or A Jew." Meaning: I May Be Me- But At Least I Have The Good Sense Not To Be You.

In A City This Size, Every Year, Hundreds Of Husbands Walk Away. Kids Leave Home. Wives Escape. People Disappear.

Didn't I Realize That Each Of Us Is A Sacred, Unique Snowflake Of Special Unique Specialness?

I Need To Rebel Against Myself. It's The Opposite Of Following Your Bliss. I Need To Do What I Most Fear.

Believe In Yourself

As The Stupidest Person In The Room, I Always Had The Most To Gain.

As If You Cut Open A Rag Doll With A Sill Name, And Found Inside:real Intestines, Real Lungs, A Beating Heart And Blood. A Lot Of Hot, Sticky Blood.

It Can Only Take A Moment To Waste The Rest Of Your Life.

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