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1 " Am I the I she tried to save, still lopsided with trying to be a little less or more, escaping who I was a minute ago? "
― Philip Schultz , Failure
2 " When I was last in Paris I was dirt poor, hiding from the Vietnam War. One night, in an old church, I considered taking my life. I didn't know how to be so young and not belong anywhere, stuck among so many perplexing melodies. "
3 " I could take a walk with my wife and try to explain the ghosts I can't stop speaking to. Or I could read all those books piling upabout the beginning of the end of understanding...Meanwhile, it's such a beautiful morning,the changing colors, the hypnotic light.I could sit by the window watching the leaves,which seem to know exactly how to fallfrom one moment to the next. Or I could loseeverything and have to begin over again. "
4 " .... Blesstheir believing happiness will make them happy;that the ocean is magical, a kingdomwhere we go to be human, and grateful. "
5 " Not one of the three black deaf-mutes who come here every day owns a dog. They sit under the fragrant decay of the big mossy oak speaking with their eyes and hands. They love dogs so much they vibrate, but, like me, they can't bear to own one. Anyone who's ever owned one knows what owning love means. "
6 " It was astonishing to finally realize that my difficulties were part of a larger problem that wasn’t my fault alone, but my brain’s, that there was a scientific modus operandi behind everything I’d come to see as the peculiarities of a besieged personality. It was amazing to comprehend that all the cat-and-mouse games my mind plays, all its endless scheming and compensatory, roundabout thinking, not only owned a name, but was a disability many others also suffered from, in many cases knowingly. "
― Philip Schultz , My Dyslexia
7 " To pay for my father's funeral I borrowed money from people he already owed money to. One called him a nobody. No, I said, he was a failure. You can't remember a nobody's name, that's why they're called nobodies. Failures are unforgettable. "
8 " Hiding is existing in a constant state of alarm, remaining undiscovered, and inferior. "
― Philip Schultz , The Wherewithal: A Novel in Verse
9 " Hide long enough from your fear, Mother said, and you too disappear. "
10 " These guys get mean waiting on furloughs, beat the machines up good, insurance replaces three batches a month, but destroying machines aint booze and pussy if you know what I mean. "
11 " For something to occur, something needed to be lived in, approached, repelled by, consumed. The present, to exist, must be remembered, despised, and feared. "
12 " Upstairs, it’s 18th century England, where farming out the poor meant lumping the blind, crippled, insane, epileptic, deaf and dumb in almshouses with criminals because The History of the Poor Laws was designed to discourage mendacity, wherein anyone giving alms to beggars was put in jail . . .” In other words, little has changed—many still believed there’s no distinction between tolerating the suffering of others and causing it. "
13 " An algorithm of infinite symmetry, life serving death by expanding its bounty, furthering its reach. Did the perpetrators appreciate their satire? Yes, it was practical, indignity as revenge, but for what? "
14 " Harrington never worked in a place like this, a system where ‘underbudgeting’ is designed to arbitrarily keep costs down while acting as a defense against public attack. The city and state thus appear magnanimous, politicians fair-minded regulators of the public good . . . until the closed cases lead to starvation, child abuse and suicides at rates so great they arouse the public’s conscience. Then it all starts again— bigger budgets, closer supervision, more MSW programs . . . while the poor are blamed because according to our Puritan tradition of self-reliance those too weak or stupid to contribute get pushed aside, deserve not to survive "
15 " Usually our frankfurter lunches in Union Square Park are a treat, but today Betty isn’t looking at me, saying, “I came out here thinking maybe being so far away would make me feel less inconsequential, but I was wrong. Evil doesn’t keep score.” Today the world is more treacherous, and no longer represented by actual or possible thought, which Ludwig said makes up the whole of reality. "
16 " Ask about these numbers and you hear other numbers. As usual, the fate of the poor hangs upon the decision of those concerned only with what those above them think. An endless cycle of egotism, self-sympathy. You see it everywhere here, those too weak and ashamed to defend themselves are blamed for their own misfortune. Separated and debased, they’re swept deeper under society’s carpet, thus the richest society in the history of the world lacks the will and conscience to end poverty while the poor become the victims of their own spiritual and physical misery . . .” In other words, according to Swigge, our job is to hide from the public’s view the suffering and helplessness of the constituents of our largest minority, and thereby further diminish them in their eyes and in ours. "
17 " . . . once on a German radio in the town square we heard Hitler’s voice, everyone German soldiers our neighbors smiling at the crazy screaming, a sound like fingernails on a blackboard trying to scrape God’s face from our minds . . . conquer our souls as well as our bodies and minds . . . Henryk looked so frightened—a wolf’s howls demanding we see the world the way it did . . . "
18 " Meanwhile,our loneliness,upon which so many laws are based,continues to consume everything.Suddenly,regardless of what the gods say,the present remains uninhabitable,the past unforgiving of the harm it’s seen,whilethe future remains translucentand unambiguousin its desire to elude us. "
― Philip Schultz
19 " Upstairs when someone for any reason is unable to state his particular reasons for existing, or stake a position, say, on the United States vs. Vietnam youthful enthusiasm vs. boredom scathing denunciation vs. racist exploitation the dollar-for-dollar precipitous decline of all sympathy and mercy . . . someone else gives up seeking the difference between things that could’ve been and weren’t and things that didn’t have to be but were. "
20 " None though as bowed, small-boned, as my own peasant legs, which in their backward sway and inward turn, shaped by years of adherence to hostile terrains, possess a history of staying put. "
