2
" I know the truth, and I will tell you now: He was admired, loved, cheered, honored, respected. In life as well as in death. A great man, he is. A great man, he was. A great man he will be. He died that day because his body had served its purpose. His soul had done what it came to do, learned what it came to learn, and then was free to leave. And I knew, as Denny sped me toward the doctor who would fix me, that if I had already accomplished what I set out to accomplish here on earth, if I had already learned what I was meant to learn, I would have left the curb one second later than I had, and I would have been killed instantly by that car. But I was not killed. Because I was not finished. I still had work to do. "
― Garth Stein , The Art of Racing in the Rain
6
" Did you ever think much about jobs? I mean, some of the jobs people land in? You see a guy giving haircuts to dogs, or maybe going along the curb with a shovel, scooping up horse manure. And you think, now why is the silly bastard doing that? He looks fairly bright, about as bright as anyone else. Why the hell does he do that for living?
You kind grin and look down your nose at him. You think he’s nuts, know what I mean, or he doesn’t have any ambition. And then you take a good look at yourself, and you stop wondering about the other guy…
You’ve got all your hands and feet. Your health is okay, and you make a nice appearance, and ambition-man! You’ve got it. You’re young, I guess: you’d call thirty young, and you’re strong. You don’t have much education, but you’ve got more than plenty of other people who go to the top. And yet with all that, with all you’ve had to do with this is as far you’ve got And something tellys you, you’re not going much farther if any.
And there is nothing to be done about it now, of course, but you can’t stop hoping. You can’t stop wondering…
…Maybe you had too much ambition. Maybe that was the trouble. You couldn’t see yourself spending forty years moving from office boy to president. So you signed on with a circulation crew; you worked the magazines from one coast to another. And then you ran across a little brush deal-it sounded nice, anyway. And you worked that until you found something better, something that looked better. And you moved from that something to another something. Coffee-and-tea premiums, dinnerware, penny-a-day insurance, photo coupons, cemetery lots, hosiery, extract, and God knows what all. You begged for the charities, You bought the old gold. You went back to the magazines and the brushes and the coffee and tea. You made good money, a couple of hundred a week sometimes. But when you averaged it up, the good weeks with the bad, it wasn’t so good. Fifty or sixty a week, maybe seventy. More than you could make, probably, behind agas pump or a soda fountain. But you had to knock yourself out to do it, and you were standing stil. You were still there at the starting place. And you weren’t a kid any more.
So you come to this town, and you see this ad. Man for outside sales and collections. Good deal for hard worker. And you think maybe this is it. This sounds like a right town. So you take the job, and you settle down in the town. And, of course, neither one of ‘em is right, they’re just like all the others. The job stinks. The town stinks. You stink. And there’s not a goddamned thing you can do about it. All you can do is go on like this other guys go on. The guy giving haircuts to dogs, and the guy sweeping up horse manute Hating it. Hating yourself.
And hoping. "
― Jim Thompson , A Hell of a Woman
7
" To escape the throngs, we decided to see the new Neil Degrasse Tyson planetarium show, Dark Universe. It costs more than two movie tickets and is less than thirty minutes long, but still I want to go back and see it again, preferably as soon as possible. It was more visually stunning than any Hollywood special effect I’d ever seen, making our smallness as individuals both staggering and - strangely - rather comforting. Only five percent of the universe consists of ordinary matter, Neil tells us. That includes all matter - you, and me, and the body of Michael Brown, and Mork’s rainbow suspenders, and the letters I wrote all summer, and the air conditioner I put out on the curb on Christmas Day because I was tired of looking at it and being reminded of the person who had installed it, and my sad dying computer that sounds like a swarm of bees when it gets too hot, and the fields of Point Reyes, and this year’s blossoms which are dust now, and the drafts of my book, and Israeli tanks, and the untaxed cigarettes that Eric Garner sold, and my father’s ill-fitting leg brace that did not accomplish what he’d hoped for in terms of restoring mobility, and the Denver airport, and haunting sperm whales that sleep vertically, and the water they sleep in, and Mars and Jupiter and all of the stars we see and all of the ones we don’t. That’s all regular matter, just five percent. A quarter is “dark matter,” which is invisible and detectable only by gravitational pull, and a whopping 70 percent of the universe is made up of “dark energy,” described as a cosmic antigravity, as yet totally unknowable. It’s basically all mystery out there - all of it, with just this one sliver of knowable, livable, finite light and life. And did I mention the effects were really cool? After seeing something like that it’s hard to stay mad at anyone, even yourself. "
― Summer Brennan
10
" Syn didn’t even think twice. He made his way to the end of the bar and lifted the top, coming behind the bar. The two girl bartenders looked at him in shock and Syn flashed his badge again. “Where’s Furious?” he asked, using his authoritative cop tone.
“He left,” they said in unison, still looking at him strangely.
“Damnit,” Syn hissed and raced out of the pub.
He looked anxiously up and down the sidewalk and saw Furious sitting on the bench, head hanging low, waiting on the bus. Even though he had a hoodie pulled up and hanging low over his forehead ... Syn knew it was his ma– He’s not my damn man, he’s just a friend.
Syn approached his new friend with all the confidence in the world but wasn’t prepared for the angry, haunted eyes that looked up at him when he slowly removed Furious’ hood. Syn sucked in a hard breath and blew it out slowly before finally deciding to speak. “Furious. Are you okay?”
No answer.
“Are you hurt?” Syn was really concerned. Furious looked detached, closed in on himself.
“Bab–” Shit. “Furi,” Syn quickly corrected. “Please answer me. Look my place is right there.” Syn pointed in the direction of his building. “If you want you can come up and talk. I can take you home later.”
It was a few long and very intense minutes that Furious didn’t move or say anything.
“We’ll just talk, okay?” Syn tried again.
Thanks a lot MARTA. Perfect timing. Just Syn’s luck that the bus pulled up to the curb and the air doors swung open.
“Furious, I just want to talk.”
“No thanks, Detective.” Furious' voice was so deep and angry, it’d felt like Furi had struck him. Syn swallowed a hard gulp. "
― A.E. Via
14
" Where are we heading?”
“The closest wooded area to here is Kenwood Academy’s estate. Good place to hide, especially at night.”
“If we’re going into the woods, I definitely need to change.”
I glanced back at her as we returned to the curb where the cab had dropped us off. “Or you could just go home.”
She crossed her arms and avoided my gaze, scowling. “You’re sick of me already? That must be a record.”
I lifted my eyes to the heavens. Women. “This creature tore out a woman’s throat and busted her chest cavity open like a piñata. I don’t like the thought of it being anywhere near you.”
“Did it ever occur to you that I feel the same way?”
Surprise flooded over me. “No, it…actually didn’t.”
“I know I’m not as strong or as smart as you are, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help. We’re partners, aren’t we?”
“Yeah,” I said, and couldn’t stop the smile creeping across my lips. “I guess we are.”
She tossed a quick look at me and frowned. “Quit it.”
“What?”
“I hate it when you do that.”
“You hate it when I smile?”
“No, when you make that, ‘aw, she does have a heart’ face. You look like a Disney prince.”
I laughed. “My bad. I’ll work on that. "
― Kyoko M. , The Deadly Seven (The Black Parade, #1.5)
16
" The heroin flowing through me, I thought about the last time I saw my father alive. He was drunk and overweight in a restaurant in Beverly Hills, and curling into myself on the bed I thought: What if I had done something that day? I had just sat passively in a restaurant booth as the midday light filled the half-empty dining room, pondering a decision. The decision was: should you disarm him? That was the word I remember: disarm. Should you tell him something that might not be the truth but would get the desired reaction? And what was I going to convince him of, even though it was a lie? Did it matter? Whatever it was, it would constitute a new beginning. The immediate line: You’re my father and I love you. I remember staring at the white tablecloth as I contemplated saying this. Could I actually do it? I didn’t believe it, and it wasn’t true, but I wanted it to be. For one moment, as my father ordered another vodka (it was two in the afternoon; this was his fourth) and started ranting about my mother and the slump in California real estate and how “your sisters” never called him, I realized it could actually happen, and that by saying this I would save him. I suddenly saw a future with my father. But the check came along with the drink and I was knocked out of my reverie by an argument he wanted to start and I simply stood up and walked away from the booth without looking back at him or saying goodbye and then I was standing in sunlight. Loosening my tie as a parking valet pulled up to the curb in the cream-colored 450 SL. I half smiled at the memory, for thinking that I could just let go of the damage that a father can do to a son. I never spoke to him again. "
― Bret Easton Ellis , Lunar Park
17
" Don't talk to strangers. Don't do drugs. Don't smoke. Don't drink and drive. Don't have sex. Wear a condom. Wear sunblock. Wear a seat belt. Wear a helmet. If you see something, say something. Just say no. Stop, drop, and roll. Stop, look, and listen. Look both ways before you cross the street...
Safety is an illusion. Bad things can happen to anyone at any time, whether you follow the rules or not. You can check left, check right, check left again before you step off the curb and into the crosswalk, but that won't stop an anonymous asshole in his shitty pickup from putting you in intensive care... "
― Megan McCafferty , Perfect Fifths (Jessica Darling, #5)
