Christopher Shull > Recent Status Updates

“It’s lonely being a serial killer. They can’t talk to anyone about their hobbies.”

"As a pediatric attending in Grady Hospital's emergency room, Sara was in charge of several students who--despite some evidence to the contrary--assumed that one day they would become doctors."

Same medical examiner from the previous quote, but almost forty years later: "If I have one regret about my impending doom, it's that I won't live to see the day when we've got everyone's DNA on an iPad, and all we have to do is scan some blood or a piece of tissue and up pops a current location for our bad guy. It'll end crime as we know it."

"In ten years' time, [the FBI] will have samples from everyone in America stored on thousands of different computers all around the country. All you'll have to do is send the sample around to each computer and bingo, within months you'll know your perpetrator's name and address."

“It turned out that The Freedom of the Press was what Bancroft called his lockpicking kit.”

“Then he remembered the night they’d been sitting on the sofa in their habitual frosty silence watching Come Djne With Me and she turned to him apropos of nothing and asked him if he knew that if he died the insurance would automatically pay off the mortgage in full. From that night he had started to lock the door of the spare room he now permanently slept in…”

“First rule of journalism: learn to shimmy down a drainpipe.”

“You use the word ‘drama’ like it’s a bad word. But here’s what you need to understand: stories are not just in books or movies. Everyone’s life is an unfolding story, and all stories have good guys and bad guys, and all stories have conflicts and resolutions, and all stories—if they are interesting—have drama.”

It’s a bit annoying that the narration keeps switching between “Gargoyle” and “the Gargoyle.”

"You should memorize some poems. You never know when they'll come in handy."

"You know how when your house burns down, the insurance company asks you to list everything you lost? Well, one of the things I lost is the story I would tell about my life. Whatever story I tell now will be told by someone--me--who knows that that story was a lie."

“It’s tough to exist in the world when there’s someone going about their business who you would die for.”

I have definitely read these pages before. I don't remember if I finished this book or not. I'm leaning towards NOT because it was published in 2018, and I think I've been consistently using Goodreads since then.

"it dawned on me that one way to find out if someone is trustworthy is to read her a passage from one of your favorite books and see how she reacts."

"Perhaps the most courageous act/of any parent's life/will be that moment/when, even though it breaks your heart,/you stand aside/and let your children/take the natural consequences/of their actions."

"If you look to your children/to provide meaning for your life,/your life will be meaningless./If you need them to be successful to feel successful yourself.//Your children were not born/to complete your life./They were both to complete their own."

"This is a book of love letters . . . to everyone and everything I have ever had trouble holding in my heart. I needed to know that I could love them, because that meant I could still love myself--as hopeless and lost as I had become. From the depths of my rage and despair, I needed to find my way back to love."

"I wrote as though I might be casting a spell or chanting a religious litany. I wrote as though poetry and prayer might mean the same thing, as if words might reconnect me with what I once considered my unshakable relationship with the human divine.."

"I want to drive a truck full of eggplants/down the smallest street./I want to be someone making music/with my coming."

"I did think, let's go about this slowly./This is important. This should take/some really deep thought. We should take/small thoughtful steps./But, bless us, we didn't."

"The cricket doesn't wonder/if there's a heaven/or, if there is/if there's room for him./It's fall. Romance is over. Still, he sings./If he can, he enters a house/through the tiniest crack under the door./Then the house grows colder./He sings slower and slower./Then, nothing./This must mean something, I don't know what./But certainly it doesn't mean/he hasn't been an excellent cricket/all his life."

"Everyone now and again wonders about/those questions that have no ready/answers/ . . . 'Wild roses,' I said to them one morning./'Do you have the answers? And if you do,/would you tell me?'/The roses laughed softly. 'Forgive us,'/they said. 'But as you can see, we are just now entirely busy being roses.'"

"And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate--once the crying of confusion stopped--seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.

"This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost."

"This morning the newspaper/was too terrible to deliver/so the newsboy just pitched out/a little sheaf/of Kleenex."

"Ahmed Ismail Khatib, you died,/but you have so many bodies now./You became a much bigger boy./You became a girl too--/your kidneys, your liver, your heart./So many people needed what you had.//In a terribly moment,/your parents pressed against/spinning cycles of revenge/to do something better./They stretched./What can that say to the rest of us?"

"My father's friend Farouk/had a dream:/God resigned./And all the people took better care of one another/and got together then/because, well, they had to./Things grew really smooth./There was no one to blame or impress."

"All night they strum/their tuneless tunes/cousins of the crickets I heard/long ago in the corners of my room/I know their stories/to carry them out, not to crush them/and the small cages they are kept in/for good luck/but tonight I understand them/for the first time/ . . . light/they're saying Slow down/slow down/We told you this long ago but/you forgot"

"The Frogs Did Not Forget / how to do what they do/through the huge dry days/where were they hiding?/one might lose a tune abandon a tradition/fall into a crack but the frogs after the rain/were singing on six notes/outside the bedroom window's/tangle of vines/pleasure poking its throaty resonance/back into my brain"

"The strength of strangers will / help us survive. / Strangers are so generous. / They don't know our faults, our flaws, / so they hope for the best, / muttering good morning / when you pass at the bridge. / The consolation of strangers is endless and forgiving."

"She listens to the radio say there will be / more fighting / though no one she knows likes fighting. // Does anyone feel happy after fighting? // It's a mystery."