Renee > Renee's Quotes

“The day before me is fraught with God knows what horrors.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Mothers got a hard road to travel, believe me.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Basically we all need to be anarchists already, there I said it.”
― Ben Passmore, Your Black Friend and Other Strangers

“There was a button," Holden said. "I pushed it."
"Jesus Christ. That really is how you go through life, isn't it?”
― James S.A. Corey, Nemesis Games

“I've never been much for tears, anyway.”
― Ed Brubaker , Velvet, Vol. 3: The Man Who Stole the World

“I was already at one remove before the Internet came along. I need another remove? Now I have to spend the time that I'm not doing the thing they're doing reading about them doing it? Streaming the clips of them doing it, commenting on how lucky they are to be doing all those things, liking and digging and bookmarking and posting and tweeting all those things, and feeling more disconnected than ever? Where does this idea of greater connection come from? I've never in my life felt more disconnected. It's like how the rich get richer. The connected get more connected while the disconnected get more disconnected. No thanks man, I can't do it. The world was a sufficient trial, Betsy, before Facebook.”
― Joshua Ferris, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

“I think its a sickness to grieve too much for those who never cared a fig for you.”
― Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

“You know you've totally screwed up your life when your whole world turns to shit and the only person you have to talk to is your system agent software!”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“A lizard fucks a crab and nine months later a turtle pops out. It's called evolution.”
― Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

“To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.”
― Federico García Lorca, Blood Wedding and Yerma

“Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas without eating a chicken fried steak.”
― Larry McMurtry, In a Narrow Grave : Essays on Texas

“Ignatius, all at once you're your horrible old self. All at once I think I'm making a very big mistake.”
― John Kennedy Toole

“I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“If the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher. Overlong, detailed to the point of distraction-and ultimately, without a major resolution.”
― Jasper Fforde, Something Rotten

“Old-growth forests met no needs. They simply were, in a way that bore no questions about purpose or value. They could not be created by men. They could not even be understood by men. They had too many parts that were interconnected in too many ways. Change one part and everything else would change, but in ways that were unpredictable and often inexplicable. This unpredictability removed such forests from the realm of human perspectives and values. The forest did not need to justify or explain itself. It existed outside of instrumental human considerations.”
― Steve Olson

“Men constantly feel hungry and women constantly feel sad. That's what marriage does to them. ~Teddy Butt, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti”
― Mohammed Hanif, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

“People never think anything is anything really. I'm getting goddam sick of it.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“People were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters. And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The superhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“The regrets about all she had let go flooded her. Where had all that enterprise gone? All that energy? Why had she never traveled? Or had more sex when she could? She had bleached and annihilated every waking moment of the last twenty years. Anything, rather than feel.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“I think it's neat you do what you want. Not enough chicks do that, if you ask me--just tell society and their expectations to go fuck themselves. If more women did that, we'd be better off.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“If your parents died suddenly, Sandro understood, your home was wherever you were, and now you were from nowhere. Your parents were your provenance. Dead, you had no provenance.”
― Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers

“(Later, Giddle's response when I told her I was in love: "Oh God, I'm so sorry. Love is awful. It ruins every normal thing, everything but itself. It makes you crazy and for nothing, because it's so disappointing. But good luck with that.")”
― Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers

“Because she hides. She doesn't realize it, I don't think, but she hides. Sometimes right in front of you. She can be sitting across from you at a table in a nice dining room somewhere and the expression on her face changes suddenly and she disappears, is in a very real and unmistakable way no longer there. You always find yourself reaching for her an instant too late, and grasping at smoke.”
― Ron Currie Jr., Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles

“And when you try to live there, to live in a place where you're betraying yourself over and over, not only do you grow to resent the hell out of it, and resent the hell out of whomever you're betraying and censoring yourself for, but the very idea of your self begins slowly and inexorably to erode. Until you realize one day out of the clear blue that you have no idea who your self is, anymore.”
― Ron Currie Jr., Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles

“Why hadn't she just said yes? Then she could have driven alone back to the city [...] and picked up some guy and brought him back home and screwed him and kicked him out and then picked up her daughter at the train the next day like a spy or a con artist, as if the two sides of herself didn't even care to know each other. But it was too late for that. Not just in terms of her ever becoming the kind of woman who knew how to do that kind of thing, without exposing herself as deluded or pathetic or ridiculous.”
― Jonathan Dee

“She praised his book and he embraced her from gratitude rather than lust, but she didn't let go. Neither did he. She kissed his cheek, his earlobe. For months they'd run their fingers around the hem of their affection without once acknowledging the fabric. The circumference of the world tightened to what their arms encompassed. She sat on the desk, between the columns of read and unread manuscript, and pulled him toward her by his index fingers.”
― Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

“Never had anyone said, "Listen. Life is short. Pretend your body is still in its twenties. Jump for the brass ring. Swing for those bleachers. Dive into the deep end of the pool. Act like a fool if you must, but at least *live*.”
― Cathie Pelletier, The One-Way Bridge

“But Harry knew now that love was a soldier. It can invade the human heart. Build canopies through jungles. Scale castle walls. Cross moats. Love can probably walk on water.”
― Cathie Pelletier, The One-Way Bridge