Gab > Gab's Quotes

“I’m a good man,’ Slim says. ‘But I’m a bad man too. And that’s like all men, kid. We all got a bit o’ good and a bit o’ bad in us. The tricky part is learnin’ how to be good all the time and bad none of the time. Some of us get that right. Most of us don’t.”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“The dads in those tv shows spend a great deal of time talking to their kids in their living rooms. Steven Keaton - the dad of my dreams - seems to do nothing but sit on his couch or at his kitchen table talking to his children about their myriad teenage calamities. He listens and listens to his kids and he pours glasses of orange juice and hands them to his kids as he listens some more. He tells his kids he loves them by telling his kids he loves them. Dad tells me he loves me when he forms a pistol out of this forefinger and thumb and points it at me as he farts. He tells us he loves us by showing us the tattoo we never knew he had on the inside of his bottom lip: Fuck you.”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“Don’t forget to be specific…Details. Put in all the details. The boys appreciate all that detailed daily life sh*t they don’t get anymore. If you’ve got a teacher you’re hot for, tell ‘em what her hair looks like, what her legs look like, what she eats for lunch. If she’s teaching you geometry, tell ‘em how she draws a bloody triangle on the blackboard. If you went down the shop for a bag of sweets yesterday, did you ride your pushee? Did you go by foot? Did you see a rainbow along the way? Did you buy gobstoppers or clinkers or caramels? If you had a good meat pie last week was it steak and peas or curry or mushroom and beef? You catchin’ my drift? Details.”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“Slim’s always talking about this, the little movies within the movie of your own life. Life lived in multiple dimensions. Life lived from multiple vantage points. One moment in time – several people meeting at a circular dining table before taking their seats – but a moment with multiple points of view. In these moments time doesn’t just move forward, it can move sideways, expanding to accommodate infinite points of view, and if you add up all these vantage point moments you might have something close to eternity passing sideways within a single moment. Or something like that.”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“Your end is a dead blue wren.”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“The truth." Dumbledore sighed. "It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“To change the world, we need to face what has become of it. To heal from a trauma, we need to understand the extent of it.”
― Roxane Gay, Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language

“But I would fall asleep next to someone who loved me, and would never leave me alone with old ghosts.”
― Roxane Gay, Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language

“Trauma shapes all our lives, in so many ways. We are walking wounds, but I am not sure any of us know quite how to talk about it.”
― Roxane Gay, Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language

“Not all writing about trauma is created equal. As with most subjects, writers can be careless with trauma. They can be solipsistic. They can write concerned only with what they need to say and not with what an audience might need to hear. They assume that their trauma, in and of itself, is the only story they need to tell, or that having experienced trauma is inherently interesting. Or trauma serves as pornography - a way of titillating the reader, a lazy way of creating narrative tension, as if it is only through suffering that we have a story to tell. We see trauma as it unfolds but are rarely given a broader understanding of that trauma or its aftermath.”
― Roxane Gay, Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language

“Sometimes suffering becomes more bearable when you can share the whole truth of it.”
― Roxane Gay, Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language

“I realized that when writing about trauma, you have to be prepared to handle not only your own trauma but being exposed to the trauma of others.”
― Roxane Gay, Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language

“I wrote about my trauma because it was the only thing I could do. I did not yet know how to make myself be heard.”
― Roxane Gay, Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language

“I pretended to be anyone but myself, hoping I could lose myself in the virtual world. I wanted to lose myself because I was losing my mind.”
― Roxane Gay, Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language

“There is no pleasure to be had in writing about trauma. It requires opening a wound, looking into the bloody gape of it, and cleaning it out, one word at a time. Only then might it be possible for that wound to heal.”
― Roxane Gay, Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language

“Why do you think women are designed to outlive men? Why do we keep going for thirty years after our bodies can no longer reproduce? Do you think nature meant for those years to be useless? No, of course not. Our lives are designed to have three parts. The first is education. The second, creation. And in part three, we put our experience to use and protect those who are weaker.”
― Kirsten Miller, The Change

“Yes, you’re afraid of me because I’m better than you are. And if you give one talented woman the power she deserves, another will follow. Then another. And together they’ll show that their way is better. Then your whole fake fucking world will come tumbling down.”
― Kirsten Miller, The Change

“Don't know about you, but I like taking up more space.”
― Kirsten Miller, The Change

“All recipes are spells and all cooks are witches.”
― Kirsten Miller, The Change

“She’d tried so hard to prove she was good enough. And now, with a few simple sentences, Harriett had explained it so plainly. Jo had been good enough all along. They’d made her feel like a failure, when the truth was, they just hadn’t wanted her around. There was nothing she could have done.”
― Kirsten Miller, The Change

“And in case you haven't noticed, somebody's always killing women.”
― Kirsten Miller, The Change

“I'm an adult and this is my house. I can grow what I like in my garden. Wear what I choose. What difference does it make what you or anyone else thinks of as normal? Why the f should I care if you approve?”
― Kirsten Miller, The Change

“Over the years, she’d trained several smarmy young men who’d gone on to become high-ranking executives. At the time, Jo had assumed it was her fault she’d never risen any higher. The men they’d promoted weren’t juggling a job and motherhood. They never had to scramble when the day care was closed or the babysitter called in sick. So Jo had watched as men who weren’t as smart or diligent or trustworthy as she was worked their way past her toward the company’s C-suite.”
― Kirsten Miller, The Change

“But the Bible says ‘do not kill,’” Nessa reminded her grandmother.
“The Commandments only apply to humans,” said the older woman. “Nobody goes to hell for killing a monster.”
― Kirsten Miller, The Change

“Justice may be relentless, as Franklin says, but she’s also hobbled by rules. That’s why I choose vengeance. She’s the only mistress I serve.”
― Kirsten Miller, The Change

“A brave man helps. A coward just gives presents.”
― Stephen King, Fairy Tale

“There’s a dark well in everyone, I think, and it never goes dry. But you drink from it at your peril. That water is poison.”
― Stephen King, Fairy Tale