The Goodbye Song QUOTES

1 " I hate this, but it’s true: being with happy people freaks me out,' she said. 'When I see them, all I could think about is how quickly their joy could end. A punch to the face. One phone call. Some hard truth. A shatter of ego. Or a house fire. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Maybe my brain needs some sort of contrast. I get scared for them. Eggshells who care about things like almond milk. I get jealous actually. I think, 'How could you be that way? "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

2 " He decided to spend his time dancing around the block. In this sequence of joy, every material object to him had the same value. He’d walk around knocking things over because they didn’t matter. They were just things. His outlook and the universe were always bigger. There was no stopping a person who minimized what ought to be minimized. Charlie couldn’t be fooled by constructs. There was something precious about the hands that held a glass ornament the same way they held a boulder. Something rare and admirable in its innocence and fearlessness. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

3 " The problem with college students is that they come into university not knowing what they love, but are handed vocabulary and concepts about their chosen passion, which equips them with rich arguments and rich words that end up fooling people they love something when they are really just passionate about someone else’s passion. Sometimes, people use knowledge as a seat belt to strap themselves in a car that they weren’t supposed to be in. They hold onto mission statements or causes and regurgitate ideas with such great articulation that you (and they) could almost believe they really loved their careers. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

4 " Charlie faced the other way. 'I don’t want to go to school today, Mom. I just want to see. I don’t know. Do the day different. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

5 " You walk around your kitchen and bedroom looking for something to do. You can—no. You did that yesterday. What is there? It seems what is harder than a hard life is an easy one. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

6 " Look out the window. You ask yourself: how are we actually supposed to live? After we’ve eaten and slept well, what is there for us? Is this life supposed to be a kind of animal that fills itself with things like lunch, TV news, occasional travels, and then dies? Like a mortal doll poked with the same colored thumbtacks as everyone else. Eat. Masturbate. Heartbreak. Sleep. Perhaps the answer to a deep boredom is community—but what good are two people but another person to eat lunch, watch TV news, and travel mediocrely with, and also die? Humans don’t know their origins, which explains why we’re always confused and longing for some unattainable dimension from 18 to 80. Can we ever be more? "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

7 " Work. Or school. This is for the money. But what is anything else of purchase, for that matter, but required means of enhancing your bare living – better sleep and better food – like spending decades just to turn a little knob higher on a pathetic radio called existence. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

8 " Work. Or school. This is for the money. But what is anything else, for that matter, but required means of enhancing your bare living – better sleep and better food – like spending decades just to turn a little knob higher on a pathetic radio called existence. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

9 " Darling, don’t say it’s me that you love,
But that you love how I make you feel on the weekends.
Don’t say you have to go, admit there’s nothing more to let me know.
Don’t say it was a good movie, tell me that it was a good break.
Don’t say you like her hair, tell me that it’s just different.
Don’t say your father’s evil, tell me that it’s ignorance.
Don’t say you feel like dying, tell me life would be better without bills.
Don’t say you hate crying, but that you hate when they see you ill.
Don’t say you love the winter, tell me you like the gifts.
Don’t say you want a vacation when you really want a kiss. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

10 " I tried to go to group counseling, but the lady said they were full and so when I tried a 1-on-1 with a counselor, they didn’t respond to my calls. I tried so many times. It’s already so embarrassing asking for help. And you have to pick up my calls, too. Please, mom. When you don’t pick up the phone, my head goes all over the place and I think you’re dead. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

11 " A cell.
 An accident. 
A person who would’ve been miserable anyway.
An appointment. 
A religious order. 
An expense. 
A political debate.
 Anything but a soul. “Why?”
 I don’t care who fights for my life. 
I care that they do.
They aren’t sure 
When my life starts, 
But they tell me when it ends. 
My body, my rights. 
Somebody, where’s mine?
 I wasn’t going to come out
 As a different thing. 
So why am I treated
 Like a different thing? 
They knew what I’d be, "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

12 " I miss her so much. So much. I can’t sleep. I just cry. Sometimes when I’m in bed, and my arm loses circulation, or my leg is in a weird position, I think of her. Her stiffness. I just lay there, with my body, frozen, imagining if that’s what she feels like... I lay my tongue out like this, all dry." He deforms himself. "I twist my wrist, and I tell her, 'Goodnight. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

13 " I am off to a life where I can exist in a room and not have to pretend I want to be there. I am off to hear people who have something to say. I don’t even have to agree with it— I just want to know what it’s like to listen to a real sentence. I long for a time where I don’t wish the day would be over. This means leaving the company. I can wonder, or I can wander—and it’s time for me to get lost. Reinvention is hard. To let it go? To admit you don’t love something anymore? That’s the stuff that kills you. But I must run before another workday asks for me again. Things are hard so that we can start. I feel like fate is blindfolding me. My arms reach out not knowing if I’ll impale myself or secure my foothold—but all great things come from motion. Nothing begets nothing. And I’m scared, but I have the movies with me. The things we love require us. I wonder what would happen if everyone in the world did what they loved. Would things fall into place and leave no empty spaces? Would there be harmony in the work field? Sustainable marriages? Children with parents? Dirty water? Would there be resignation letters? "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

14 " Let us wish that the speed granted by our technologies saves us plenty of time for life ahead...Yet, where to is this destination of life that makes the observation of it so dreadful? The impatient people who rush for the new are like fools chasing a mirror, wondering whose face they’d find when they catch it. Nothing awaits us. Convenience will one day reveal that we have nowhere to go, except towards each other. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

15 " Sometimes, in their wide-eyed, ashamed, fanatical temperament, their humanity spills out in a discomfort that is nearly frightening. But, we all harbor some form of innocent strangeness that we keep to ourselves—our fears, our obsessions, our questionable sanities. They are the reasons why we do things— routes we take, instruments we learn, and CDs we buy. It sounds like honey, but I’m not just being an essayist here. I do believe it. And it’s the truth because today, I’d like to share my strange with you. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

16 " I wonder how many people would care about the world if they could do it anonymously. It’s fine to believe what we want, but it’s not fine to think people are less than us because they think different. Different is beautiful. Variety is gracious. We live in a time of two: you or me. It’s so cold. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

17 " Oh, it definitely sucked,” replied Akshay. And of course it will suck. All things sucked when you were trying to get along with someone. Even if something didn’t actually suck, it sucked when you were talking about it, as if the only way to secure a bond was to clutch at something troublesome. Often this looks like faking tiredness to fit in. Finding negativity is like discovering the perfect mask for the masquerade ball you’re about to attend. One can always hate. It is accessible. What we love is embarrassing. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

18 " Companionship will be made possible from enduring lonely nights, leaving the wrong drinking buddies, books and benches, concerts and stadiums, and universities and clothing stores. These were the conditions necessary for companionship. You will answer the question all souls ask: How will I find you? The answer: Truth magnetizes to truth, as long as it repels temptation. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

19 " My skin yields acne in double digits—a mountainous domain of genetic misfortune. Sometimes in the morning, the pimples get so bad that if I rinse my face towards the showerhead, the water breaks the pustule and I start to bleed. So I shower the same way I behave in public: with my head down. At bedtime, I get stiff because as soon as I turn to one side and sleep, I’ll wake up with a bloody pillowcase. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

20 " People are born on this planet with no choice at all
And have to spend most of their life working to pay it off. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song