Home > Work > Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock
61 " But it makes me laugh every time because I don't wear and of that name-brand crap, don't play or follow popular sports at all, and wouldn't be found dead wearing our shitty school mascot. I'm not a follower. Not a joiner. I'm not even on Facebook. "
― Matthew Quick , Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock
62 " Can't it just exist without an explanation? Why do we have to assign meaning to art? Do we need to understand everything? Maybe it exists to evoke feelings and emotions -- period. Not to mean something. "
63 " You can’t expect kids to save themselves, can you? "
64 " It was like once again someone was labeling me and putting me in a box just as soon I expressed myself. "
65 " He keeps whispering, “You’re okay,” and I simultaneously love him and hate him for saying that. I’m fucking not okay at all. And yet it’s exactly what I most want to be: okay. He can’t give that to me, but I love him for trying. "
66 " How do you measure suffering? I mean, the fact that I live in a democratic country doesn’t guarantee my life will be problem-free. Far from it. I understand that I am relatively privileged from a socioeconomical viewpoint, but so was Hamlet—so are a lot of miserable people. I bet there are people in Iran who are happier than I am—who wish to keep living there regardless of who is in charge politically, while I’m miserable here in this supposedly free country and just want out of this life at any cost. "
67 " We never see any boats. But you man the light anyway--just in case. And WE got to see it--all these years. The great light. The beautiful sweeping beam! We were here to see it, and that was enough....Weed your mind. And man the great light. Even when no one is looking. "
68 " I realized that the truth doesn’t matter most of the time, and when people have awful ideas about your identity, that’s just the way it will stay no matter what you do. "
69 " And I know that your childhood wasn't all that great-that you felt a lot of pain,and that you are in a lot of pain right now. But maybe you have to go through all that so you'll learn just how important having a happy childhood can be, so you will provide one for our daughter. "
70 " Mostly, as I'm sitting here in A.P. English, I think about the way my classmates are always raising their hands and sucking up to Mrs. Giavotella just so she will give them As, which they will send to Harvard or Princeton or Stanford or where-fucking-ever, to go along with their lies about how much community service they supposedly did and essays about how much they care about poor minority children they'll never meet in real life or how they are going to save the world armed with nothing but a big heart and an Ivy League education. "
71 " I didn’t believe you when you said there was a red statue that read “LOVE,” with the LO stacked on top of the VE. LO VE It sounded like something out of one of the old fairy tales you used to tell me when I was a little girl. I thought you were kidding when you said people in the past believed in love so much that they made statues to celebrate it, so they wouldn’t forget to LOVE… well, that seemed kind of ridiculous—but when we dove down and you shined the thermal lantern, and it turned out to be true, I felt like there were so many possibilities in the world—like I’m only beginning to discover what’s achievable. Maybe I will find a pure love—like what you and Mom have. "
72 " I prithee take thy fingers from my throat, For, though I am not splenitive and rash, Yet have I in me something dangerous, Which let thy wisdom fear. Hold off thy hand. —From Hamlet by Shakespeare "
73 " It can. If you’re willing to do the work.” “What work?” “Not letting the world destroy you. That’s a daily battle. "
74 " And how stories and objects and people and pretty much everything can blink out of existence at any time. "
75 " ...and ponder what he said about there being people with worse problems than mine. It takes me all of three seconds to conclude that’s such a bullshit thing to say. Like the people in Iran are more important than me because their suffering is supposedly more acute. Bullshit. "
76 " They looked more like sisters than mother and daughter, and I wondered if believing in Jesus kept you younger-looking. But then I thought, if that were really true, Linda would be the biggest Jesus freak going, because she'd drown a baby in a bathtub if it would make her look ten years younger. "
77 " It’s so quiet in my room that I wonder if this is what being dead sounds like. "
78 " And man the great light. Even when no one is looking. "
79 " In the future I man a lighthouse with my wife, daughter, and father-in-law. We send out a great beam of light every night even though no one ever sees it. "
80 " I'd like to feel okay all the time -- to have the ability to sit and function without feeling so much pressure, without feeling as though blood is going to spurt from my eyes and fingers and toes if I don't do something. "