Dawn Mackey > Dawn's Quotes

“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
― Charles Bukowski

“There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you.”
― Charles Bukowski

“It's better to do a dull thing with style than a dangerous thing without it.”
― Charles Bukowski

“I just look at her and she creeps me out. She looks like she would eat a baby. Not that she's fat. She just looks hungry in some dangerous way that can't be explained. She's always so nice and friendly. Exactly the disposition of a baby killer.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors

“We were young. We were bored. And the old electroshock therapy machine was just under the stairs in a box next to the Hoover.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Running With Scissors

“I like flaws and feel more comfortable around people who have them. I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Magical Thinking: True Stories

“In addition to calling each other standard names like bitch and whore, the Finches incorporated Freud's stages of psycho-sexual development into their arsenal of invectives.

"You're so oral. You'll never make it to genital! The most you can ever hope for is to reach anal, you immature, frigid old maid," Natalie yelled.

"Stop antagonizing me," Hope shouted. "Just stop transfering all this anger onto me."

"Your avoidance tactics are not giong to work, Miss Hope," Natalie warned. "I'm not going to let you just slink away from me. You hate me and you have to confront me.”
― Augusten Burroughs

“It was impossible to escape her. She provided no natural break in the conversation, and she spoke with such intensity that I would have had to abruptly shout "SHUT THE FUCK UP," punch her, and then run away in order to be free.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Magical Thinking: True Stories

“He was raised without a proper diagnosis.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors

“The most mortifying fact of my life is something that happened when I was fourteen and I have never admitted to anyone: not to friends nor therapists; not even in rehab when we were detailing our own personal spirals of shame did I confess. It is this: I am a graduate of the Barbizon School of Modeling.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Magical Thinking: True Stories

“Why spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour," she'd ask us, "when in the same amount of time, I can do a painting that will last forever?”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“If you get down, all you need to do is act like you're feeling good, and next thing you know, you are.”
― Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses

“I can't believe anyone would voluntarily run 26 miles. Sometimes I sit on the couch cross-legged because I don't feel like walking to the bathroom.”
― jen lancaster

“Furthermore, worrying about people and problems doesn't help. It doesn't solve problems, it doesn't help other people, and it doesn't help us. It is wasted energy.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“I used to spend so much time reacting and responding to everyone else that my life had no direction. Other people's lives, problems, and wants set the course for my life. Once I realized it was okay for me to think about and identify what I wanted, remarkable things began to take place in my life.”
― Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go: Daily Meditations on Codependency

“The lesson I was learning involved the idea that I could feel compassion for people without acting on it. ”
― Melody Beattie, Beyond Codependency: And Getting Better All the Time

“Beliefs create reality”
― Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go: Daily Meditations on Codependency

“Living simply is not about living in poverty or self-inflicted deprivation. It's about living an examined life where one has determined what is truly important and enough … and then just let go of all the rest. ”
― Duane Elgin

“Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.”
― Rex Stout, The Red Box

“A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.”
― Rex Stout, The League of Frightened Men

“Im haunted a little this evening by feelings that have no vocabulary and events that should be explained in dimensions of lint rather than words.

Ive been examining half-scraps of my childhood. They are pieces of distant life that have no form or meaning. They are things that just happened like lint.”
― Richard Brautigan

“I saw thousands of pumpkins last night
come floating in on the tide,
bumping up against the rocks and
rolling up on the beaches;
it must be Halloween in the sea”
― Richard Brautigan, The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster

“I'll tell you about it because I am here and you are distant.”
― Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar

“Hinged to forgetfulness like a door,
she slowly closed out of sight,
and she was the woman I loved,
but too many times she slept like
a mechanical deer in my caresses,
and I ached in the metal silence
of her dreams.”
― Richard Brautigan, Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt

“Boo, Forever

Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I'm haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.”
― Richard Brautigan, The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster

“The bookstore was a parking lot for used graveyards. Thousands of graveyards were parked in rows like cars. Most of the books were out of print, and no one wanted to read them any more and the people who had read the books had died or forgotten about them, but through the organic process of music the books had become virgins again.”
― Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

“Her sunny side was always up.”
― Richard Brautigan, Sombrero Fallout

“My Name

“I guess you are kind of curious as to who I am, but I am one of those who do not have a regular name. My name depends on you. Just call me whatever is in your mind.
If you are thinking about something that happened a long time ago: Somebody asked you a question and you did not know the answer.
That is my name.
Perhaps it was raining very hard.
That is my name.
Or somebody wanted you to do something. You did it. Then they told you what you did was wrong—“Sorry for the mistake,”—and you had to do something else.
That is my name.
Perhaps it was a game you played when you were a child or something that came idly into your mind when you were old and sitting in a chair near the window.
That is my name.
Or you walked someplace. There were flowers all around.
That is my name.
Perhaps you stared into a river. There as something near you who loved you. They were about to touch you. You could feel this before it happened. Then it happened.
That is my name.”
― Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar

“With the rain falling
surgically against the roof,
I ate a dish of ice cream
that looked like Kafka's hat.
It was a dish of ice cream
tasting like an operating table
with the patient staring
up at the ceiling.”
― Richard Brautigan, Lay the Marble Tea

“Our names were made for us in another century.”
― Richard Brautigan