Kyle St Germain > Quotes

“He felt good today, though. Rubbable. He might even go so far as to say hopeful. Whether that was simply insistent optimism or false hope, he would take what he could. I’m only storing up karmic liabilities, he mused to himself musingly.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“As seemed to be the theme of his days recently, Danny was questioning his reality, questioning his dreams, questioning his mind, questioning what was real, what was imagined, and then questioning why.
“It’s as real as you want it to be, Danny,” barked that voice again that definitely wasn’t his.
He was feeling displaced, like an outsider, as though he were simply doing a pale impersonation of himself. And not even a good impersonation either, with steps too long, breaths too quick, smile too wide, blinks too slow. Get a hold of yourself, idiot.
So he searched the room, searched his world, interrogating the shadows, prodding the corners, acknowledging the spaces, seeking for something to ground himself.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“You joke, but Lovecraft really was deathly afraid of all sea life,” Rudy was raving.
“Among other things, like music and black people,” Danny conceded.
Yu shivered, “Well they are evil.”
Ashleigh finally decided to jump on the conversation-wagon, “Octopus or Africans?”
“Like that, right there,” Rudy said as though whatever point he was trying to make had been proved. “We’re always applying moral attributes to actions and objects. We like to compartmentalize. We are a nation divided in so many ways. Politically, economically, geographically.”
“This coming from a guy who jerked off to an Eisenhower biography?” Yu said, almost as a non-sequitur if it weren’t true.
“I wasn’t reading it; it had just fallen open!”
Yu karate chopped him.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“We carry our own worlds with us, and our realities are what we perceive them to be. We all draw our own lines in the sand.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“He asked: “You are aware of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, right?”
“‘You Do Not Talk About Thermodynamics?’” Rudy said nothing. “The currency of the universe, Entropy. Okay and…?”
“A candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.”
“That seems unrelated, but I’ll allow it. Is that supposed to be comforting?”
“I like either the lavender or cinnamon-scented ones.”
“This isn’t the advice I was asking for and you know that.”
“Isn’t it? You know, it doesn’t take a master’s in behavioral psychology to see you’ve some unresolved issues.”
“And the universe has a tendency to devolve into chaos, so why bother controlling it, just control myself?”
Rudy just continued to shoot glances at Danny’s arm. Danny kept it face down, pretending not to notice.
“Rudy: Sigmund Freud meets Dr. Seuss. Thank you.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“Rudy entered and almost tripped over something. “Danny, you really ought to stop sweeping things under the rug. What the hell is this anyway?”
“Uh,” Danny peered around the corner, “I’m pretty sure that was a toaster.” Rudy was holding up mangled pieces of metal that he fished from beneath the carpet. “It broke,” Danny shrugged. “Drink?”
Rudy put the toaster back under the rug. “Please. A single malt, preferably from the Highlands.”
“You’ll take a glass of carrot juice and you’ll like it!” Danny poured Rudy and himself a few fingers of something that was either scotch or carrot juice.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“Okay,” Danny stood afterwards, as though about to make a public speech. “We are really making strides today, and I’m proud of us. I would very much like to carry this momentum forth with us as we forge a path through the remainder of the day. So, without further ado, I say, um… let’s go!”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“Danny knew well what is important about a story, and that they were structurally overdue for a disaster; as tragedy waits with comedy on the same coin. Life is just about finding the balance in between. It’s that span of time, while the coin is still spinning in the air, and hasn’t quite landed yet; Schrodinger’s penny. We take the good and prepare for the bad. It's like a rollercoaster ride where we hold the handles while climbing the rails, and throw our hands up as we descend, to feel the rush of wind against our skin and blowing through our hair.
Flip that coin, ride that ride.
We must find the little comforts. Insatiable as they may be, it’s important to feed our illusions.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“I am content,” Rudy often told Danny.
“Is that all?” Danny would ask.
“What else is there?”
Danny was always conflicted between agreeing, and being contrary.
“We spend countless hours simply filling our days to the brim. Work, relationships, hobbies. Anything to distract us. It has to be about the excesses—about finding our obsessions to live and die by,” Danny said, eyebrow raised.
“Are you asking or simply saying?” Rudy had replied, in that manner of his that made you feel as though you were intruding, as though he wished he were somewhere else with his nose-deep in a book. Yet he wasn’t.
“I guess both,” Danny confessed.
“You’re asking ‘What is life?’”
“Yes.”
“That’s like asking ‘What is a carrot?’ It’s a carrot!” here Rudy held up one of the orange veggies, pulling it seemingly from thin air.
“And, by that logic, then,” Danny said, snatching it from Rudy’s hand. “You’re telling me, that life is a carrot?”
“Now you got it!” Rudy beamed, summoning another carrot.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“I love a girl with a head on her shoulders,” Rudy Jack Nicholsoned while Steve Martining—Rudy’s words; not even Danny could tell you fully what they meant, but it was the only way to accurately describe it. “I hate necks.”
“There’s nothing more beautiful to me than a woman in a black evening gown, and a ski mask, with only her breasts and crotch exposed,” Yu exclaimed, characteristically offbeat with the entire conversation.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“Then, in a blink, his ghost of memory was gone, leaving behind only the uncomfortable feeling of having been someone other than himself for a sliced instant of his life. He felt as if he were stuck between two futures, and whatever he did next would become the decision to live in one of them.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“Mornings usually filled him with an existential dread. Just his bad hors d’oeuvres, separate from the main course of the day. What happened after waking usually did precious little to alter those initial impressions; he always felt a little askew, a little asymmetrical like a cubist painting. Shadows were cast through a healthy dose of indifference, with a pervasive lack of interest in anything that didn’t directly affect the world here and now. And it continued like that.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“So, he smiled instead, because he could, because it was a complete and utter waste of energy and thought not to. That’s the thing to do, you see. If you go through life with a smile on your face, you’ll be amazed how many people will come up to you and say ‘What the hell are you grinning about? What’s so funny?’
The joke. That is what’s funny. Even though it was a joke without a punchline, as told by an amnesiac comic. Yet we bark a baffled, contrived chop of laughter and sit through his act anyway, watching his mindless stumble, thoughtless bumble, and wordless jumble. We force ourselves to sit through his act. He’s just not that funny, though. Yet we sit and we laugh.
Or we try to.
We hope to.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“Danny left the store, confident that he may have found a way to tilt this day a little more straighter standing, into something that didn’t so much resemble Pisa’s monument. Tracks of fate had begun to run a little too perpendicular with him today, rather than the parallel direction they usually run. He was realizing that parallel wasn’t so bad, no, in fact, he kind of missed it. Mostly, though, he just wanted some coffee.
With each step, he felt as though a stony weight lifted off his chest. It had been there all morning, that heaviness, like an invisible albatross, a cartoon cinder block holding him down. He hadn’t realized the true size of it until, all at once, it dropped away, disappearing into the day without even a sound. Just a breath. His chest expanded as he took in as much air as he could hold, feeling good. Decisions were always cathartic, no matter their size.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“They found a lush, green spot on a small hill behind the park. Danny could have sworn that it was that one hill from that Salvador Dali painting. You know, the one with the hill? Then again, he thought the same thing of every mailbox that he walked past each morning. Neither was in any way, form, shape, or former shape related to Mr. Dali. As such, Danny’s assumptions never really did hold much weight; they weighed only about two pounds each. "Wolf! Wolf! The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Salvador Dali! Salvador Dali!”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“Connection is something that most people miss out on completely or intentionally avoid with those they have only just met. Yet, with conflicting hopes, we all put on our best masks, our best personalities, our best selves, sometimes even our best pants when meeting new people. Whether consciously so is a different question. But putting forth these bests is something that makes sense. You can never really know someone completely, there will always be things we keep only to ourselves. That is why it’s so terrifying, trying, taking someone on faith, hoping they’ll take you on faith as well. They don’t know you, they don’t know how you were yesterday, they don’t know your past mistakes or regrets, they don’t know your irrational fear of dentists or if you once belly danced for strangers, they don’t know the ethnicity of your gods, they only know what you choose to show them and what you choose to tell them.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“After all, who is ever threatened by a Librarian?
(Except for that one librarian who hunted a seven-year old Danny across state and provincial borders, endlessly, tirelessly over the span of three years to try murder him for accidentally moving away, with the library’s copy of “The Berenstain Bears and the Bad Dream” book. But that’s a story for another time. Where were we?)”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“Memories are funny things,” Mrs. Darby pressed on. “They are fickle creatures, constantly changing. Every time we look back on a memory, it has changed, it is never the same as how it was when we made the memory. How could it be? Because every time we look back, we too have changed. We have collected new experiences, new opinions, new pains. You aren’t looking back on them with the same eyes.”
“Nostalgia is not like it used to be,” Danny quipped, and was pleased with himself that he drew a laugh out of her.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“There was a point in his life where he—for lack of a better word—fell into himself. Became could be that better word lacking. Became is a good word. He believed that everybody had a character, a self that they would inevitably become. Years go by, we trudge along, and we collect pieces of ourselves, traits and beliefs, habits and opinions, compulsions and decisions, until we are.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“It was a starry night, something out of a fake Vincent Van Gogh painting. Crisp, according to nipples. It smelled freshly of just-missed-rain.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“A butterfly flitted by the window, lackadaisically and languidly gliding, unaware of its beauty. Following the insect with his eyes, Danny felt a moment of peace, watching the sunlight reflecting off its purple wings, luminescent with every flap. The world is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our senses to sharpen.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“It was one of those days when you wondered whether pants mattered. Usually, they did. Clothes maketh the man, as they say. Nudists had very little sway on society.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“The world seemed to throb in that moment and reverberate. The buildings appeared clearer, sheening in an autumn crispness; the wind rippled through the grass, and the green shades of each blade waved at the summer-colored sun; the smells in the air—suddenly—vividly smelled of spring and fresh starts; and the world felt still, calm like a winter’s clarity. It all felt somehow more real, and more familiar to Danny, like a memory he had at some point forgotten.
And there she stood.
His heart skipped a couple of beats. Rapidly, he blinked and said, in a very quiet voice, to the first woman he had ever everythinged. “You shouldn’t be here.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“As the days began to feel like they were all bleeding into one another, the lines separating them becoming but a blurred gradient resembling lines not at all, with the world continuing to spin regardless of mortal toil, the tectonic plates shifting beneath our feet, and people growing everywhere around, for him, at least one thing remained constant: the aromatic scent of coffee tinging the air, kissing his nostrils. Some say that no true satisfaction could be found in instant gratification. Danny begged to differ as he moved to pour his first cup. Coffee, our way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.
Sipping the hot bean water, he felt ready~”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“One could throw a thesaurus at him, landing on the H-section page with the word ‘habit’ displayed now, and he knew that there was no reason to read on. He understood the substance of that surface; through routine came comfort.
That’s a danger we expose ourselves to daily though, isn't it? Comfort; a mundane insanity. It is like a drug, once you get used to it, it becomes almost addicting. And Danny had too grown comfortable with that, with comfort. With opinions and outlooks piled past his eyes can see, and held onto, held back for so long that they had grown bitter to his tongue. Comfortably so.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction