Home > Author > Lynn Coady
1 " I,” I’ll type. And that will be enough.Then there are the other days, when nothing is enough. The poem grins. It grins because it knows it is a terrible poem. It grins in embarrassment. It grins in pity. It grins in superiority. I may be a terrible poem, it grins, but at least I have one comfort. At least I’m not a terrible poet. At least I’m not the guy who sat in front of a typewriter for two hours coming up with the likes of me. "
― Lynn Coady , Mean Boy
2 " She comes to naught, my dear one, she comes to naught, all that there business. What the hell, maybe twice in your life you have yourself a whore of a good time, and then you spend every night of the rest of your life trying to get that good time back. But she comes to naught. "
― Lynn Coady , Strange Heaven
3 " And thank you for not putting it in your book.And fuck you for not putting it in your book. "
― Lynn Coady
4 " Then there are the other days, when nothing is enough. The poem grins. It grins because it knows it is a terrible poem. It grins in embarrassment. It grins in pity. It grins in superiority. I may be a terrible poem, it grins, but at least I have one comfort. At least I'm not a terrible *poet*. At least I'm not the guy who sat in front of a typewriter for two hours coming up with the likes of *me*. "
5 " Just think of all the confidence we start out with, all the certainty. And then we embark and we fail, much to our surprise. And then we fail something else, and gradually the surprise dwindles and soon we are surprised by nothing and thus are made adults. "
― Lynn Coady , Watching You Without Me
6 " I thought my life with Kelli could be balanced, mitigated,. That Irene had just been doing it all wrong these years. I' thought we could hang out like normal sisters, run errands, go for lattes with Jessica Hendy, and every now and then go off and have a little temper tantrum if Kelli go on my nerves--leave her in the car, assume she'd be fine. I'd assumed I could indulge myself if need be, that there could be some kind of fulfillment beyond my sister's care--that I didn't have to give myself over to it completely. But here's what I needed to understand--what Irene understood. Either you were all in with Kelli, or you were not. But if you were, Kelli had to become your joy. Kelli would be where you went for meaning. Kelli was what it was all about. And Irene was right about this too-- it was like faith. It was exactly like faith in that you had to stop futzing around and let it take you over. No more hemming and hawing. No more trying to have it both ways. And once you put your petty shit aside --your petty ego and your petty needs and your petty ambitions--that was when at last the world opened up. The world that was Kelli. It was a small world, a circumscribed world but it was your world and you did what you could to make it more beautiful. You focused on hygiene, nourishing meals, a pleasing home that always smelled good. That was your achievement and more important that was you. Once you accept that, you were--and this was strange to think, but the moment I thought it, I realized I put my finger on the savagely beating heart of my mother's philosophy--free.When I was a kid, my mother had a lavishly illustrated encyclopedia of saints she would sometimes flip through with me, and I remember how she always made a point of skipping over Saint Teresa of Avila . She didn't want to talk about the illustration that went with it. It was a photograph of the sculpture The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, and it was pretty obvious to me even as a child why my mother disapproved. It was a sexy sculpture. The smirking angel prepares to pierce Teresa's heart with his holy spear, and boy oh boy is Saint Teresa ready. Her eyes are closed, her lips are parted, and somehow everything about her marble body, swathed in marble clothing looks to be in motion. Saint Teresa is writhing.She's writhing because that is what it is to be a Catholic Saint. This is your fulfillment. The giving over. The letting go. The disappearance. This is what it takes "
7 " What I'm saying is, a lot of boys don't bother growing into men, because they don't have to--their bodies have already done it and it turns out that's all anybody requires. "
― Lynn Coady , The Antagonist
8 " There is something about knowing you are not safe in sleep that gives a person bad dreams. The expectation of being woken every night — that feeling of insecurity and dread I remember carrying around with me as my marriage was drawing to a close, like a rotting smell I couldn’t find the source of, shit I didn’t know I stepped in. The subconscious starts sending messages: Be vigilant. Don’t relax. Here’s a boogeyman or two to keep your nerves on edge. "
9 " Who are you going to believe runs the show if you’re a citizen of Planet Earth with any kind of awareness as to what’s going on around you? Are you going to buy into the story about this great guy, who is actually somehow three guys, one-third human, and he loves everybody equally, and all he wants is for everyone to behave themselves? (But, oh yeah, sometimes tsunamis at Christmastime. Sometimes bombs on civilian populations. Sometimes mothers dying horribly.) Or do you believe in this self-absorbed pack of loons who couldn’t give a shit what happens on earth but just for fun decide to come down every once in a while to screw with us? "
10 " Of course, the bulk of these monoliths remains underwater. Hence the old "tip of the iceberg" saying. To mean: This is just the beginning. You think this is something? This is nothing. "
― Lynn Coady , Hellgoing