Brock Clarke > Quotes

“Fear and love might leave a man complacent, but jealousy will always get him out of the van.”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“If only my mother had a book to hold, she wouldn't have looked so lonely. And maybe this was another reason why people read: not so they would feel less lonely, but so that other people would think they looked less lonely with a book in their hands and therefore not pity them and leave them alone.”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“Oh no," I said, because if our life is just one endless song about hope and regret, then "oh no" is apparently that song's chorus, the words we always return to.”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“Because we both knew that sometimes the lies you tell are less frightening than the loneliness you might feel if you stopped telling them.”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“Some people, when desperate, retreat to pills or hard liquor. I nap.”
― Brock Clarke, Exley

“But maybe this is what happens when you hate someone for so long: the person you hate dies, but the hate stays with you, to keep you company.”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“All of this made me feel better about myself, and I was grateful to the books for teaching me-without my even having to read them- that there were people in the world more desperate, more self-absorbed, more boring than I was. - about memoirs”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“There's nothing as quiet as that moment before one person is about to tell another something neither of them wants to hear.”
― Brock Clarke, Exley

“When I was a boy, I would read those postcards and know exactly why my father was doing what he was doing: he was taking a stab at greatness, that is, if greatness is simply another word for doing something different from what you were already doing--or maybe greatness is the thing we want to have so that other people will want to have us, or maybe greatness is merely the grail for our unhappy, striving selves, the thing we think we need but don't and can't get anyway.”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“Can a story be good only if it produces an effect? If the effect is a bad one, but intended, has the story done its job? Is it then a good story? If the story produces an effect other than the intended one, is it then a bad story? Can a story be said to produce an effect at all? Can a story actually do anything at all? ”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“The past comes back once and then it keeps coming back and coming back, not just one part of the past but all of it, the forgotten crowd of your life breaks out of the gallery and comes rushing at you, and there is no sense in hiding from the crowd, it will find you; it's your crowd, you're the only one it's looking for.”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“...Maybe this was another reason why people read: not so that they would feel less lonely, but so that other people would think they looked less lonely with a book in their hands and therefore not pity them and leave them alone.”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“Because this is another thing your average American man in crisis does: he tries to go home, forgetting, momentarily, that he is the reason he left home in the first place, that the home is not his anymore, and that the crisis is him.”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“But then again, I was pretty certain I'd make more mistakes, so I didn't dwell on the one I'd just made too long. This is another thing I'll put in my arsonist's guide: if you make a mistake, don't dwell on it too long, because you'll make more of them.”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“Apparently, you become yourself to someone when that someone finally learns your secrets.”
― Brock Clarke, Exley

“They [my eyes] immediately started to tear up, tears being your eyes' way of forbidding you to look away,of forcing you to look at the world you've made or unmade. ”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“When he did that, I didn't hate him anymore, I really didn't, and maybe this is why people do so many hateful things to the people that who love them: because it's so easy to stop hating someone if you've already started loving them.”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“Because this is one of the things I learned on my own: you need to say things simply, especially when they're complicated.”
― Brock Clarke, Exley

“After a dream like that, you're grateful that it was just a dream, that no matter how bad your actual life, it couldn't be worse than your dream life. ”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“I think, that love endures, but that it isn't everything, and it isn't ever what we want it to be...”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“I bet it was also the triumphant Aha! and not the truth itself that had fueled all those famous literary detectives I knew not much about except their names - Philip Marlowe, Sherlock Holmes, Joe and Frank Hardy. I felt like yelling something celebratory on my way home, something like, Yeah! or Fuck, yeah! just like Marlowe would have yelled, just like the Hardys would have yelled, and maybe Holmes, too, although maybe that's why he kept Watson around; to tell Holmes to simmer down and not get too far ahead of himself.”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“You can wait only so long for a blackened window to be illuminated.”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“... I also empathized, because she'd tried to do these things out of love, and because she had bumbled the attempt, and I suppose this - the ability to empathize with the people we hate - is exactly the quality that makes us human beings, which makes you wonder why anyone would want to be one.”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“And I thought that maybe this was what it means to get old: to have someone much younger remind you of how you weren't the same person you used to be.”
― Brock Clarke, Exley

“There is always someone smarter than you; you’d think we die from the constant pain of our mental inferiority, except that most of the time we’re too stupid to feel it.”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“They looked at each other for a while their gazes steady, unblinking. It was the way people stare at each other not when they're in love but afterward, when they finally realize all the many horrible and beautiful things locked up within that love.”
― Brock Clarke, Carrying the Torch

“In truth I was very pleased with myself and with my story and all that had happened in it. Because you can't help being impressed with your own story. Because if you're not impressed with your own story, then who will be?”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“There is something underwhelming about scholarly hate mail — the sad literary allusions, the refusal to use contractions – and so I didn't pay much attention to those letters at all.”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“For years, my mother must have hated Deirdre; for years she must have wished her dead. And now that Deirdre was dead, my mother looked no different than she had when she thought Deirdre was alive - not guilty, nor relieved, nor happy. How was this possible? How could my mother know Deirdre was dead and still look at the world as if it were the same world, at the fire as if it were the same fire? But maybe this is what happens when you hate someone for so long: the person you hate dies, but the hate stays with you, to keep you company”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“Because this is one of the things I learned from Exley: anything can be a beginning as long as you call it one.”
― Brock Clarke, Exley