Bart Yates > Quotes

“I should probably apologize for how much I swear, but fuck it. I've read that some people think swearing shows a lack of imagination and a limited vocabulary, but sometimes "darn" and "poop" and "oh heck" just don't cut it. Besides, swearing is kind of fun.”
― Bart Yates, Leave Myself Behind

“It seems to be that loneliness is a small price to pay for peace and quiet.”
― Bart Yates, The Brothers Bishop

“Love attacks. It sneaks up like a pride of lions or a pack of hyenas and eats your heart out while you watch. Love is the bully on the playground who takes your lunch money and gives you a black eye in return, the arsonist who burns your house down with you in it, the witch who lures you into her home with candy and boils you alive for dinner. Love is raw, and violent, and instantaneous. You don’t fall in love; you get trampled by it.”
― Bart Yates

“Maybe physical intimacy isn't always about touching. Maybe it's also about being able to sit next to someone at dinner and not care if he takes something off your plate or reaches across you for the salt. Maybe it's about being able to sprawl out on the floor and read a book in the same room with someone who's grading papers and muttering about 'incompetent boobs who couldn't write a good paper if their lives depended on it.' Maybe it's about sharing the same space with another person and not going fucking crazy because you can't get away from them.

That's it, I guess: true intimacy is really just the run of the mill, day to day stuff that happens without thinking—thousands of simple, meaningless, comfortable ways you can be close to someone, never dreaming how shitty you'll feel when you wake up one morning with all of it gone.”
― Bart Yates, Leave Myself Behind

“With Tommy, gift-giving is an art form. Whatever he bestows on you is more likely than not going to be something absurd and cheap and tacky, but the way he offers it always makes you feel as if you were receiving an oblation. I don’t know how he does it. It’s a bizarre kind of magic; he somehow makes you believe that the useless thing in his outstretched hands is actually a chunk of his heart that he’s torn out, just for you. He holds it up for your inspection, and it glows between his fingers like a candle in a cave. And as if that weren’t enough, he makes it absolutely clear that he doesn’t want anything in return, not even your gratitude, so all you can do is stand there with a stupefied look on your face and humbly accept what he’s vouchsafing you.”
― Bart Yates, The Brothers Bishop

“Love doesn’t "grow." It doesn’t wait for you to discover it, it doesn’t fall like a gentle rain from the sky, it doesn’t tiptoe into your heart like a happy little bunny, and it doesn’t have a fucking thing to do with familiarity. Love is neither patient nor kind.
Love attacks. It sneaks up like a pride of lions or a pack of hyenas and eats your heart out while you watch. Love is the bully on the playground who takes your lunch money and gives you a black eye in return, the arsonist who burns your house down with you in it, the witch who lures you into her home with candy and boils you alive for dinner. Love is raw, and violent, and instantaneous. You don’t fall in love; you get trampled by it.”
― Bart Yates

“I’ve been told on more than one occasion that I should stop reading so much and actually have a life, but do you know what I’ve figured out? People in books are much more interesting than the people who’ve told me that.”
― Bart Yates, The Brothers Bishop

“Want to know the biggest lie ever written? ’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. What an unmitigated pile of shit.”
― Bart Yates, The Brothers Bishop

“Want to know the biggest lie ever written? 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
― Bart Yates

“The librarian is a caricature of librarian - short white hair, horn-rimmed glasses, a bosom you could hide Christmas presents under and a New England-tight-ass face that looks like she hasn's taken a shit since her family came over on the Mayflower.”
― Bart Yates, Leave Myself Behind

“Where does a child of mine get all that hair, I wonder? Arthur’s not exceptionally hirsute, and the men on my side of the family are as bald as potatoes. I must have had an affair with a gorilla before he was born, but you’d think I’d remember something like that, wouldn’t you? ... Be a dear and remind me to leave my brandy flask at home the next time I visit the zoo.”
― Bart Yates, The Distance Between Us

“The best hours of my life have been spent in a quiet corner or under a tree or on the beach with a book in my hands. I’ve been told on more than one occasion that I should stop reading so much and actually have a life, but do you know what I’ve figured out? People in books are much more interesting than the people who’ve told me that.”
― bart yates

“It's not about love. Of course I love the little shit. But he knows too much about me that no one else on the planet knows, and when he's around I have no choice but to think about everything I hate about myself and my past. He's a gangrenous leg attached to my psyche, and I need to hack him off before he infects my whole fucking soul.”
― Bart Yates, The Brothers Bishop

“Love doesn’t “grow.” It doesn’t wait for you to discover it, it doesn’t fall like a gentle rain from the sky, it doesn’t tiptoe into your heart like a happy little bunny, and it doesn’t have a fucking thing to do with familiarity. Love is neither patient nor kind.

Love attacks. It sneaks up like a pride of lions or a pack of hyenas and eats your heart out while you watch. Love is the bully on the playground who takes your lunch money and gives you a black eye in return, the arsonist who burns your house down with you in it, the witch who lures you into her home with candy and boils you alive for dinner. Love is raw, and violent, and instantaneous. You don’t fall in love; you get trampled by it.”
― Bart Yates, The Brothers Bishop

“What’s that on your wrist?” I ask. “I kind of like it.”
He stares at me. “You’re joking, right?”
Tommy bursts out laughing. “Nope. Nathan’s an innocent. He’s never seen a cock-ring before.”
Philip shakes his head. “Wow. What kind of a homo are you?”
Tommy laughs harder and I start to get irritated. “Why are you wearing a cock-ring on your wrist?”
Philip politely explains that a cock-ring on your left wrist means you’re a “top,” but if you have one on the right, like he does, then you’re a “bottom.”
Camille opens her eyes. “You’re such a cliché, Philip. Why do you need to advertise what you do in bed?”
Philip frowns. “I’m not advertising. I’m just, I don’t know, saying what I enjoy.”
She makes a face. “That’s very tasteful. I’m sure everybody you meet is dying to know what sexual position you like.” She sniffs. “Personally, I prefer doggy style. Do they make a bracelet for that, too?”
― Bart Yates, The Brothers Bishop

“Every time a book opens, an angel coughs up a hairball.”
― Bart Yates

“Sprawled out on the front lawn/ looking up at an ordinary sky/ it could fall on me and some how be/ the day I didn't die.”
― Bart Yates, Leave Myself Behind

“Yeah, I know what the shrinks say: "Conflict and conflict resolution are the mainstays of human intimacy." That fatuous little axiom may be true, but it presupposes that human intimacy is a desirable thing. I have never been nearly as happy with somebody else in the room as I am when I’m by myself. It seems to me that loneliness is a small price to pay for peace and quiet.”
― Bart Yates, The Brothers Bishop

“When you’re a kid it’s an adventure if the power goes off,” I said, groping my way back into our pitch-black living room. “It’s somewhat less stimulating when you’re eighty-eight, and on the toilet with your pants around your ankles.”
― Bart Yates, The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl

“Hygiene is for people like me; I’ve reached an age where I can no longer afford to smell like myself.”
― Bart Yates, The Brothers Bishop

“Love and hate and guilt and lust are so much more real than first edition books and antique furniture and Hummel figurines and bright scraps of cloth—but then again the only thing that nonmaterial objects leave to mark their passing—at least in the case of people like Tommy and me—is ruined lives, and distorted echoes, and crippled footprints on the earth, so I guess there’s nothing wrong with digging around in the dirt for baubles and gewgaws to line your shelves and mantels with. I suppose it passes the time. But Cheri’s lost village needs to stay lost. Let the vines and shrubs covering it stay there, let the trees continue to block out the sunlight above it, let the dead rest in peace.

God knows the living never will.”
― Bart Yates, The Brothers Bishop

“I go slowly, one tentative step at a time, and clutch the banister with both hands—death may not scare me, but hip replacement surgery isn’t on my bucket list.”
― Bart Yates, The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl

“The ocean is friendly again, all smiles and soft words. It accepted Tommy’s sacrifice and seems to be sated for the moment. Yet I feel the pull, and I know what it wants. It’s already sniffing at my shins and wetting its lips. If you listen closely you can hear it chuckling to itself.”
― Bart Yates, The Brothers Bishop

“I'd love to blame by dysfunction on someone else - like maybe I was abducted by aliens, and the green little bastards unplugged my cerebellum, just for shits and giggles - but it's all my fault. And though I'm well aware it's an epic waste of time, and spirit, to wallow in regret, I can't seem to help it.”
― Bart Yates, The Language of Love and Loss

“The odds of a tornado actually hitting us are a million to one,” Aggie reminded me. “So were the odds of us getting hit by an avalanche,” I retorted.”
― Bart Yates, The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl

“After Simon left, I dug out Dad’s old copy of Emerson again. I thumbed through the pages, reading what somebody else—probably Dad, I suppose—underlined years ago. I guess I hoped I’d find something that would give me a reason, yet again, to go on living.
Something to help mitigate all this pain and guilt. I found nothing but senseless words. Emerson was an innocent man, and hope is for the innocent.
I started to put the book back, but then I dropped it on the floor, facedown. When I picked it up again, I read one final phrase: “My life is not an apology, but a life.” For some reason, it was the only sentence in the book underscored in ink instead of pencil. It went through me like a knife.
Maybe Dad was trying to tell me something. He must have known I’d read that book again someday; maybe those words helped him get through his life, and maybe he thought they’d help me eventually, too.

I don’t have any real reason to believe that, but at this point I’ll take what I can get.”
― Bart Yates, The Brothers Bishop

“But some things never change. No matter what else happens in the universe—the fall of communism, the destruction of the ozone, the death of punk rock, whatever—you can at least put your faith in one thing: If a man is pretty, available, and breathing, Tommy will stick his dick in him.”
― Bart Yates, The Brothers Bishop

“Aggie nudged my arm gently—she must’ve caught me wiping my eyes—and I grunted in disbelief when I realized she was trying to pass the candle. I took a deep breath, then accepted the silly damn thing from her, unable to keep from smiling a little in spite of my sadness and fear. Of course she still wanted to play. We might not have a home anymore, and God only knew how much time we had left together on the planet, but at least we could fire off childish insults at each other and share another laugh or two before our game was finally over. It was who we were, after all, who we’d always been. I handed the candle back to her, just to make her happy.”
― Bart Yates, The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl

“Sometimes you hurt people for no reason. Just because you can.”
― Bart Yates, The Brothers Bishop

“Yet whatever twinges of conscience I may have, I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't do the same thing again, in a heartbeat.”
― Bart Yates, The Language of Love and Loss