The Goodbye Song QUOTES

121 " And here lies our conundrum: we hate the world when we talk about it, but if all of us hate the world for being mean, there is no world to hate. We’re stuck in theory and are entertaining an invisible villain. Up close, you get along with those supposed monsters. The world is made up of individual people who despise the world, but when meeting, they get along all the same. There is no evil society, only people we haven’t met yet. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

123 " I have two wishes: something true somewhere and someone true sometime. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

125 " It isn’t about how many books you read. What counts is the books you re-read. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

127 " Come with me. Don’t look at me like that. I know it’s ridiculous and that’s why. We’re dead here. If you still want us, we’ll have to go find it, but it isn’t here. I know two certainties. I love you and good things take work. Life is that thing we create when we already have what we need. I don’t need another yesterday. What’s the point? It’s no coincidence the things that I worked for were the only things that ever made me happy. In trying, I feel like a human again. In that space before the reward. Finally, I am. The men I met before you are as good as dust. I don’t even remember their names. All it took was looking at each other for us to meet. Nothing needed to be earned. It’s why most relationships are secretly unhappy. They were built on a neutral convenience. They don’t know each other. But the sex will be nice and the arms of holding someone in the holidays and hating being lonely will make us stay forever. Perfectly tame. Whatever happened to walking up to a stranger on the street and slaying the dragon of Fear? Marriages built on endeavor. Giving someone your whole day. Identity from hermitting. Life is achievement, honey. Death is saying okay. The best fruit is the one you have to climb for. You have to march through the fire. Make the jump. Drive across the country. Effort in love. Effort in fashion. Food. Work. Give thought to how we chew. How we move. Even speak. To make day and night things our own. It’s our only job. Indecision is criminal. When we try, we exist again. And I have to exist. I have to, I have to. So I’m leaving. And you can come if you want. I’m going either way, but you’d be my favorite. Flight’s at 5 "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

129 " Vocabulary is a systematic result of what other people paid for you to have and because people consume the first thing they see, they can’t think for themselves and are puppetted by corporations who make money off what you think is free, when it’s actually costing the precious rarity of your existence. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

131 " Why do I have to exhaust myself trying to pretend to enjoy someone’s company? Or to like something? It hurts everyone involved. I laugh at their bad jokes and they continue to say them. I answer, “I’m great,” and we grow farther apart, or I say “yes” and lose another night where I could be alone instead. The nicest thing we can tell some people is that we are better off without them. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

133 " Productivity is now sold as a lifestyle. People hustle away and grind for the sake of grinding. New calendars. New dry erase markers. New journals. But when they write in advanced journals, they write of goals and next steps— never of thoughts and secrets. When they write of goals, their goals are to have more goals. So you abandon the empty castle that is productivity and enter the little cottage of your funny heart. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

135 " All singers now sound the same because all you have to do is whisper and sound pretty. No one ever belts. Don’t you wanna hear someone’s heart again?" she said. "All I hear is tongue and breath and cheek and throat. I want ugly again. Mistakes. Uvula. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

137 " The classroom is a special place. It’s one of the few times a group of different people have to be in the same room. Outside, it’s only strangers in subway rides for a few minutes. It’s rare. We never really know people again. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song

139 " He turned to his side, with the kind of creepily glazed look our eyeballs make when we’re alone in a room, brushing our teeth, chewing, or wiping our ass. His blanket was still wet with warm semen. He thought about his father. Then he remembered he needed to wash the clothes in the laundromat. His semen dripped and he thought about bird feeding. There was one bird who loved his safflower seeds. He ground his teeth and imagined what it was like to be born in Africa. He reflected on his most recent online English tutor lesson learning from a native speaker. He was fluent, but it paid to feel like you had a friend somewhere. Then he thought of peanut butter. The thoughts of the human mind transition so quickly that it only ever seems strange when we say it aloud to someone else. Otherwise, we’re all secretly freaks with our mouths shut. He laid there ugly. "

― Karl Kristian Flores , The Goodbye Song