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41 " WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR PASTServe it with lemons and curdled milkwith shortbread biscuitsmake the day grayspots of rain.Make a quilt out of the villainscrochet the heroes together in a hatWear the hat. Use the quiltas a picnic blanket.Bring your friends.Watch the squirrels be tiny monkeysdare-deviling the trees.Exclaim things!Each lemon, sup of tea, cookieis a bite into the future /will digest, exit, and swim.Digest. Exit. Swim.Drink the curdled milk and get sickwatch your friends clean uphold your hair back / hat onhand you a tissue.When you wash the vomitout of the villainous quilteach time it gets weakerPicnic often. "
― A.S. King , Switch
42 " Thick skin is a fallacy. The skin is an organ. It isn't just about pimples and freckles and sunburn and wrinkles. All skin is thick skin. "
― A.S. King , Still Life with Tornado
43 " Since that day I saw you in chemistry class with thatt canary yellow shirt, I wanted to make every day Christmas for you. "
― A.S. King , Everybody Sees the Ants
44 " I look back at Danny and I think about what Ginny said to me: Friends act like friends. My stomach tightens. "
45 " I'd rather feel something for real than pretend it's not what it is. Which Zen guy said "If you want to drown, do not torture yourself with shallow water"? "
― A.S. King , Please Ignore Vera Dietz
46 " --he stopped and eyed Bill Corso--"if you choose to just sit here like a bored jungle gorilla, you will have to write out this quote as many times as you can during the next hour. "
47 " There is something in the room with us. It's familiar. It's a feeling I've known my whole life but never talked about. It's an invisible man or monster under the bed.History. That's what it is. History is in the room with us. You absorb it even if it's not happening right in front of you. You absorb the feeling of it. It's there even though it's not there. It's in your skin. "
48 " You can’t abandon people and think they’re going to be fine. People need things. Probably love most of all. "
― A.S. King
49 " Frankly, I think they could have fast-tracked the whole thing. How did it take from 1590-something to 1890-something to improve on one of the best inventions ever? Three hundred years? That's way too long. What were they busy doing in that time? A few wars? Some genocide? Burning witches? None of that was worth ignoring the flush toilet. "
50 " Granddad is on his mat, meditating. He says, "You have to live in the present, Lucky." "But it's impossible to forget." "I didn't say you had to forget it. Never forget it. But stop living there. Live here, in the present. Think forward to your future." "My future is three more years of Nader McMillan." "Yes, but from now on you're the one in control. "
51 " We're sitting there, her smoking, me watching her smoke, and it's too quiet, so I do what I've done my whole life when it's too quiet. I say something really stupid. "
52 " Judging from our last fifteen flights, I can tell you that poverty is not a popular conversation choice in first class. Or any class. In any class. Going anywhere. Which is really handy for the people on the plane, I guess. "
― A.S. King , Dig.
53 " I love vocab. It's like spelunking in a cave you've been in your whole life and discovering a thousand new tunnels. "
54 " My mother left us when I was twelve. She found a man who was not as parsimonious as my father and moved to Las Vegas, Nevada which is two thousand five hundred miles away. She doesn't visit. She doesn’t call. She sends me a card on my birthday with fifty dollars in it, which my father nags me about until I finally go to the bank and deposit it. And so, for all six years she’s been gone, I have $337 to show for having a mother.Dad says that thirty-seven bucks is good interest. He doesn't see the irony in that. He doesn't see the word interest as anything not connected to money because he’s an accountant and to him, everything is a number.I think $37 and no other and no visits or phone calls is shitty interest. "
55 " She called it baggage. "You're scared to open your suitcases and see what your mother packed. "
56 " Only two hours earlier she was telling me how great I was because I could cook eggs. Now my egg-making means I'm a homicidal maniac. Now I might wipe out random people at a mall because I don't smile enough. Why are the adults in my life so determined to bring me down when I'm feeling good?I find myself thinking that it would be nice to be able to fix my life the way I'm fixing the patio. I wonder, is there enough terracotta-colored cement to fill the hole where my father should be? Or where my mother's spine should be? Or where my guts should be? "
57 " As I fall asleep, I think about Ginny and the look she gave me at church, and it makes me feel that familiar sinking in my gut-the way I've felt every time I've seen Nader McMillan in the hall since I was seven. He didn't even need to say anything to me. Just his existence would make me fell powerless and stupid. The difference, I guess, is that he gained his power by humiliating me. Thurns out when someone you actually give a shit about turns on you, it's even more powerful. "
58 " I guess it was hard for him to look at the logic behind the draft lotteries, because that same logic had taken away his father. And, anyway, what’s so logical about the day you were born deciding when you might die? That’s just a cruel joke, as I see it. "
59 " The world is full of assholes. What are you doing to make sure you're not one of them? "
60 " Because with Charlie, nothing was ever easy. Everything was windswept and octagonal and finger-combed. Everything was difficult and odd, and the theme songs all had minor chords. "