Daniel Vitale > Quotes

“Maybe she couldn't take the thought of people jumping from the Notch when her mother did not decide to die. She kept a secret from me and left me without her, to do what she felt she needed to do. Does that mean we're no longer friends? I lied for her; I told no one she was wanting to leave. And now, the friend I believed I would always have, because I chose to believe it, is gone.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“She then explained to me a theory of hers that everything we do is to combat boredom. "Boredom leads to loneliness, and loneliness makes life meaningless, so the true challenge of life is finding excitement everywhere.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“I wish I could have been perfect for AB's life, and that they could have been perfect for mine. In all my quiet moments, I can only think about their wet-looking curly black hair, those yellow-veined dark-blue black-containing eyes, and that smile of crowded teeth with the red tongue poking through. If I could have spent this very same night with Helena, or off somewhere with AB, hidden in a copse of trees, telling each other our secrets, with only the Earth to hear us, making new secrets, seeing each other close, touching each other's hair and skin, holding hands, hiding and finding each other, like the only two people on Earth, to set aside for just one night all the people in my life who I feel I must constantly solve--if I could, I'm not sure I wouldn't choose to wave goodbye to Helena as she tends the garden and shouts out to me, "Have fun, be safe, see you soon!" and I start walking up the road, around the copse of trees, into a purpling desert, with every intention to come back, but I don't know when...”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“Emotions are like transactions, and sometimes I have nothing to trade with.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“I want to live in a place where I don't eat the food grown on graves.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“And with our faces together, I feel a swelling in my chest, which is what happens when you kiss a person you love. My heart skips, one-two. I take my hands off theirs and roll up my sleeves to feel every drop of rain on my skin, both cool and warm.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“I hope one day I write a song that makes people happy. Your body knows when music sounds right or wrong.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“I have limitations like everyone else, and when I'm not perfect, I start to think I should never have tried; should have stayed inside the school; not gone up the hillock with Sybil; done nothing, remained safely alive, a second child requiring more than everyone else in Canland, contributing less, teetering on the edge of vestigiality. If I only resolved myself to become nothing, would I be free? Does it take great strength to become nothing, no one?”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“It took motherhood to teach me that fear is an indispensable asset. It tells us when something is wrong.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“So I said to Cole, one day Sasha's going to grow up and people will be unkind to her because of things she can't control, things that happened before she was born, and every day she's going to have to make a decision about whether or not to be kind back to a world that will be unkind to her. Her mother chose to be kind to the world. Sasha deserves to remain a piece of her mother--no matter who raises her, where she goes, or what she chooses.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“Time is all we get, and the double-edged sword of our intelligence is knowing that our time will end. To fight that fear, we spend too much time acting as though it will never end.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“Good," Helm says. "Find the necessity in your art. If you can find the necessity, you'll never stop doing it, which is of course the only point of art, that it transcends the humdrum." He looks me straight in the eyes. "Art is the least inadequate solution to answering our infinite questions with our finite means.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“To me, love between humans requires a reverence for forces more powerful than humanity.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“The good thing about scars is that they don't require my memory of them--I've never willed scar tissue into form. They tell their own story.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“Why are the smartest people the most oblivious, and why do they get away with it?”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“He's a romantic, and his heart hinders his capacity for reason and makes him inconsistent.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“She rubs my nose lightly with her thumb and sighs. "It was devotion, Tristan. Devotion brought the world down. Misguided, unrelenting devotion. Devotion disguised as religion, duty, vocation, advancement. People forgot about other people. Don't become obsessed with anything; it reduces you.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“Children make everyone the same again. Life no longer has an end. People will always have children. It's the only salve for wounds caused by grief. Grief for oneself, even."
"Imagine the grief of losing a child, then," I say.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“He said, We all have time to ponder, it's just that, for some people, it's a luxury they have to pay for with sleep. But you and I get to talk about things like this while making a contribution people love us for; not really fair, is it?”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“I look up at the purple-silver sky, and think of how many more times I'll get to look at it, and all the people I know who are looking at it too, and how even after one of those stars dies, it'll shine for thousands of years, and no one on Earth will ever live long enough to know it's gone.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“He asks good questions and listens to my answers."
"Does he ever ask you how you decide who gets a chance?"
"I don't know."
"If he doesn't, then he's not asking the question that matters.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“What do you mean? They were in a Specral Part?"
"We say autism here. Euphemisms protect evil men. You understand what I mean by that?”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“You can't be brave unless you're afraid.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“That's how she explained people to me: they're always feeling something.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“Isn't that strange? Knowing someone up until a certain point, and then you don't anymore.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“Also, I guess it's possible for memories to unexpectedly come back to you. In this way, the past has a life of its own. I am a container for the past, and like a microbiome, it is a whole universe inside you.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland

“I let my head slide down the front of his shoulder. There's still meat on it, but I can feel the bone too, against my cheek. I put my nose in his armpit and smell him. It's the same as he's always smelled--all his toil, his departures, his violence, his shame at failing with his talents to convince Michael to stay, his sorrow over Sybil and whatever else, and all the anger he hates to have, the things he wants to change, things he's never told me and doesn't need to, but could and I'd love him anyway, everything exhaled by him and inhaled by me through his sour scent.”
― Daniel Vitale, Orphans of Canland