charlie

“Look, this isn't magic realism. This is not another story about superstitious island people and their primitive beliefs. No. You don't get off that easy. This is a story about people as real as you are, and as real as I once was before I became a bodiless thing floating up here in the sky. You might as well consider a more urgent question; not whether you believe this story or not, but whether this story is about the kinds of people you have never taken the time to believe in.”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“([FELIX] suddenly stands up and cocks his arm back, about to hurl the cup angrily against the front door. Then he thinks better of it, puts the cup down and sits)
OSCAR. (Watching this) Why didn’t you throw it?
FELIX. I almost did. I get so insane with myself sometimes.
OSCAR. Then why don’t you throw the cup?
FELIX. Because I’m trying to control myself.
OSCAR. Why?
FELIX. What do you mean, why?
OSCAR. Why do you have to control yourself? You’re angry, you felt like throwing the cup, why don’t you throw it?
FELIX. Because there’s no point to it. I’d still be angry and I’d have a broken cup.
OSCAR. How do you know how you’d feel? Maybe you’d feel wonderful. Why do you have to control every single thought in your head? Why don’t you let loose once in your life? Do something that you feel like doing—and not what you think you’re supposed to do. Stop keeping books, Felix. Relax. Get drunk. Get angry. C’mon, break the goddamned cup!”
― Neil Simon, The Odd Couple - A Comedy in Three Acts

“FELIX. I can’t stand it, Oscar. I hate me. Oh, boy, do I hate me.
OSCAR. You don’t hate you. You love you. You think no one has problems like you.
FELIX. Don’t give me that analyst jazz. I happen to know I hate my guts.
OSCAR. Come on, Felix; I’ve never seen anyone so in love.
FELIX. (Hurt) I thought you were my friend.
OSCAR. That’s why I can talk to you like this. Because I love you almost as much as you do.”
― Neil Simon, The Odd Couple - A Comedy in Three Acts

“That life - whatever else it is - is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch