Jordan Castro > Quotes

“It seems insane to be expected to lie in a dark room alone and not feel completely crazy and bipolar and confused and more awake.”
― Jordan Castro, Young Americans

“The question is not whether or not one will suffer, I wrote. The question must necessarily be, What will justify the suffering?”
― Jordan Castro, The Novelist

“My brain felt glitchy, like a malfunctioning computer; my thoughts were like unwanted pop-ups. If technology strove to eventually emulate consciousness, the engineers had already unwittingly accomplished it: shitty pop-ups and unwanted emails were exactly like my thoughts.”
― Jordan Castro, The Novelist

“Just this past week, I had been followed and unfollowed then refollowed three times by the editor of a low-level literary magazine.”
― Jordan Castro, The Novelist

“While I read a book, text seemed to enter my brain through my eyes, then from there into somewhere in my psyche, but with Twitter, the tweets seemed to enter straight into my body.”
― Jordan Castro, The Novelist

“Something in me lurched, slowly rose, like a monster emerging from a marsh; bubbling liquid and gas; fog; I was unable to discern—did I need water? or to poop?—then I realized, rather shocked at its simplicity: I was hungry.”
― Jordan Castro, The Novelist

“The kinds of things I half-heartedly fantasized about—sustaining a family, a career, a relationship—were just fantasies; I’d wasted too much time conflicted and confused. My choices, over years, had stacked up on top of each other until they felt like external forces, walls that obstructed my view and confined me; even this morning, I considered, I’d made terrible choices unceasingly . . . I couldn’t simply become another person.”
― Jordan Castro, The Novelist

“There was something rather special about being able to aim; Violet could not. This made me feel better about myself: for all of the ways in which women were better than men, we would always have our ability to pee on things.”
― Jordan Castro, The Novelist

“I felt increasingly like I was staring at the screen from a face that was not my actual face, but was somehow behind or inside of my face—my “second face”; like I was inhabiting an auxiliary body inside of my body; my outer body was the actor, operating independently of me—“I” was somewhere inside of myself, behind my outer face, my “skin face”; there was no conscious sensation in my hands.”
― Jordan Castro, The Novelist

“Shifting my weight between buttocks on the toilet, I felt entirely uninterested in reading or thinking about anything; I felt preemptively exhausted at the prospect of being thrust into having to think about something; I needed to save my energy for my novel. I double-clicked the circle button at the bottom of my phone and swiped up, exiting Twitter. My face felt vaguely numb; my right leg tingled; I bounced my leg up and down on the ball of my foot, like a volatile invalid, or a child; it felt as if microscopic needles were pricking my calf and foot; I farted, which startled me.”
― Jordan Castro, The Novelist

“The problem could have easily been fixed by calling or texting the landlord, who would have gladly come or sent someone to fix it, but because I didn’t want to deal with the resultant interaction, however brief or relatively painless, I’d been subjecting myself to this pitter-patter for months.”
― Jordan Castro, The Novelist