Great Throughts Treasury

"I do not have toxic relationships, they take hostages."

"I don?t think there?s a person alive who doesn?t have certain passions. I think if you?re lucky, either by genetics or you just get a really good education, you find things that become passions that are just really rich and really good and really joyful, as opposed to the passion being, you know, getting drunk and watching football. Which has its appeals, right? But it is not the sort of calories that get you through your 20s, and then your 30s, and then your 40s, and, ?Ooh, here comes death,? you know, the big stuff."

"I don't think writers are any smarter than other people. I think they may be more compelling in their stupidity, or in their confusion."

"I don't think he was used to patients who were already aware of what their real problem was. He was also a bit of a pill-pusher. I balked at trying antidepressants, I just couldn't see myself taking pills to try to be less of a fraud. I said that even if they worked, how would I know if it was me or the pills? By that time I already knew I was a fraud. I knew what my problem was, I just couldn't seem to stop. I remember I spent maybe the first twenty times or so in analysis acting all open and candid but in reality sort of fencing with him or leading him around by the nose, basically showing him that I wasn't just another one of those patients who stumbled in with no clue what their real problem was or who were totally out of touch with the truth themselves."

"I don't think irony's meant to synergize with anything as heartfelt as"

"I don't want to hurt myself. I want to stop hurting."

"I felt despair. The word?s overused and banalified now, despair, but it?s a serious word, and I?m using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture ? a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death. It?s maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But it?s not these things, quite. It?s more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that I?m small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to die. It?s wanting to jump overboard."

"I felt more solidly composed, now that I was horizontal. I was impossible to knock down."

"I felt the sort of soaring, ceilingless tedium that transcends tedium and becomes worry."

"I guess a bit part of serious fiction?s purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves."

"I fully grant that mysterious invisible room-cleaning is in a way great, every true slob?s fantasy, somebody materializing and deslobbing your room and then dematerializing?like having a mom without the guilt. But there is also, I think, a creeping guilt here, a deep"

"I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction?s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. I guess a big part of serious fiction?s purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves. Since an ineluctable part of being a human self is suffering, part of what we humans come to art for is an experience of suffering, necessarily a vicarious experience, more like a sort of generalization of suffering. Does this make sense? We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy?s impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character?s pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside."

"I go through a loop in which I notice all the ways I am...self-centered and careerist and not true to standards and values that transcend my own petty interests...but then I countenance the fact here at least here I am worrying about it; so then I feel better about myself...but this soon becomes a vehicle for feeling superior to imagined Others...I think I'm very honest and candid, but I'm also proud of how honest and candid I am--so where does that put me."

"I go through a loop in which I notice all the ways I am ? for just an example ? self-centered and careerist and not true to standards and values that transcend my own petty interests, and feel like I?m not one of the good ones; but then I countenance the fact that here at least here I am worrying about it, noticing all the ways I fall short of integrity, and I imagine that maybe people without any integrity at all don?t notice or worry about it; so then I feel better about myself (I mean, at least this stuff is on my mind, at least I?m dissatisfied with my level of integrity and commitment); but this soon becomes a vehicle for feeling superior to (imagined) Others... It has to do with God and gods and a basic sense of trust in the universe v. fear that the universe must be held at bay and micromanaged into giving me some smidgeon of some gratification I feel I simply can?t live without. It?s all very confusing. I think I?m very honest and candid, but I?m also proud of how honest and candid I am ? so where does that put me."

"I had four hundred thousand pages of continental philosophy and lit theory in my head. And by God, I was going to use it to prove to him that I was smarter than he was."

"I guess that?s supposed to be deconstruction?s original program, right? People have been under some sort of metaphysical anesthesia, so you dismantle the metaphysics? axioms and prejudices, show it in cross section and reveal the advantages of its abandonment. It?s literally aggravating: you awaken them to the fact that they?ve been unconsciously imbibing some narcotic pharmakon since they were old enough to say Momma."

"I had kind of a midlife crisis at twenty which probably doesn?t augur well for my longevity"

"I have always tried to avoid talking to pretty girls, because pretty girls have a vicious effect on me in which every part of my brain is shut down except for the part that says unbelievably stupid things and the part that is aware that I am saying unbelievably stupid things."

"I hated it here. And I have never been as happy as when I was here. And these two things together confront me with the beak and claws of the True."

"I have felt as bleak as I've felt since puberty, and have filled almost three Mead notebooks trying to figure out whether it was Them or Just Me."

"I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts clich? about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed."

"I have this -- here?s this thing where it?s going to sound sappy to you. I have this unbelievably like five-year-old?s belief that art is just absolutely magic. And that good art can do things that nothing else in the solar system can do. And that the good stuff will survive, and get read, and that in the great winnowing process, the shit will sink and the good stuff will rise."

"I have now seen sucrose beaches and water a very bright blue. I have seen an all-red leisure suit with flared lapels. I have smelled suntan lotion spread over 2,100 pounds of hot flesh. I have been addressed as Mon in three different nations. I have seen 500 upscale Americans dance the Electric Slide. I have seen sunsets that looked computer-enhanced. I have (very briefly) joined a conga line."

"I kept saying her name and she would ask What? and I?d say her name again. I?m not afraid of how this sounds to you. I?m not embarrassed now. But if you could understand, had I?can you see why there?s no way I could let her just go away after this? Why I felt this apical sadness and fear at the thought of her getting her bag and sandals and New Age blanket and leaving and laughing when I clutched her hem and begged her not to leave and said I loved her and closing the door gently and going off barefoot down the hall and never seeing her again? Why it didn?t matter if she was fluffy or not terribly bright? Nothing else mattered. She had all my attention. I?d fallen in love with her. I believed she could save me. I know how this sounds, trust me. I know your type and I know what you?re bound to ask. Ask it now. This is your chance. I felt she could save me I said. Ask me now. Say it. I stand here naked before you. Judge me, you chilly cunt. You dyke, you bitch, cooze, cunt, slut, gash. Happy now? All borne out? Be happy. I don?t care. I knew she could. I knew I loved. End of story."

"I kiss them often, I admit it, it is what I do, I am a kisser, and a kiss with Lenore is, if I may indulge a bit for a moment here, not so much a kiss as it is a dislocation, a removal and rude transportation of essence from self to lip, so that it is not so much two human bodies coming together and doing the usual things with their lips as it is two sets of lips spawned together and joined in kind from the beginning of post-Scarsdale time, achieving full ontological status only in subsequent union and trailing behind and below them, as they join and become whole, two now utterly superfluous fleshly bodies, drooping outward and downward from the kiss like the tired stems of over-blossomed flora, trailing shoes on the ground, husks."

"I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital- T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness ? awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: This is water, this is water. It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out."

"I learned that the world of men as it exists today is a bureaucracy. This is an obvious truth, of course, though it is also one the ignorance of which causes great suffering. But moreover, I discovered, in the only way that a man ever really learns anything important, the real skill that is required to succeed in a bureaucracy. I mean really succeed: do good, make a difference, serve. I discovered the key. This key is not efficiency, or probity, or insight, or wisdom. It is not political cunning, interpersonal skills, raw IQ, loyalty, vision, or any of the qualities that the bureaucratic world calls virtues, and tests for. The key is a certain capacity that underlies all these qualities, rather the way that an ability to breathe and pump blood underlies all thought and action. The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with boredom. To function effectively in an environment that precludes everything vital and human. To breathe, so to speak, without air. The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable. It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish."

"I have pointed rhythmically at the ceiling to the two-four beat of the same disco music I hated pointing at the ceiling to in 1977."

"I like the fans? sound at night. Do you? It?s like somebody big far away goes like: it?sOKit?sOKit?sOKit?sOK, over and over. From very far away."

"I love you, Lenore. There is no hate in what I feel for you. Only the intense sadness that causes me my inability to explain or describe"

"I never, even for a moment, doubted what they?d told me. This is why it is that adults and even parents can, unwittingly, be cruel: they cannot imagine doubt?s complete absence. They have forgotten."

"I mean, Tarantino is such a SHMUCK 90 percent of the time. But ten percent of the time, I've seen genius shining off the guy."

"I Philo, educating yourself was something you had to do in spite if school, not because of it -- which is basically why so many of my high school peers are still there in Philo even now, selling one another insurance, drinking supermarket liquor, watching television, awaiting the formality of their first cardiac."

"I miss everyone. I can remember being young and feeling a thing and identifying it as homesickness, and then thinking well now that?s odd, isn?t it, because I was home, all the time. What on earth are we to make of that?"

"I read, I say. I study and read. I bet I've read everything you read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM-drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, ?The library, and step on it.? My instincts concerning syntax and mechanics are better than your own, I can tell, with all due respect. But it transcends the mechanics. I'm not a machine. I feel and believe. I have opinions. Some of them are interesting. I could, if you'd let me, talk and talk."

"I said I think I?m being followed.? ?Some men are born to lead, O."

"I submit that the real reason we criticized and disliked Lynch's Laura's muddy bothness is that it required of us an empathetic confrontation with the exact same muddy bothness in ourselves and our intimates that makes the real world of moral selves so tense and uncomfortable, a bothness we go to the movies to get a couple hours' fucking relief from."

"I say is someone in there?? The voice is the young post-New formalist from Pittsburgh who affects Continental and wears an ascot that won?t stay tight, with that hesitant knocking of when you know perfectly well someone?s in there, the bathroom door composed of thirty-six that?s three times a lengthwise twelve recessed two-beveled squares in a warped rectangle of steam-softened wood, not quite white, the bottom outside corner right here raw wood and mangled from hitting the cabinets? bottom drawer?s wicked metal knob, through the door and offset ?Red? and glowering actors and calendar and very crowded scene and pubic spirals of pale blue smoke from the elephant-colored rubble of ash and little blackened chunks in the foil funnel?s cone, the smoke?s baby-blanket blue that?s sent her sliding down along the wall past knotted washcloth, towel rack, blood-flower wallpaper and intricately grimed electrical outlet, the light sharp bitter tint of a heated sky?s blue that?s left her uprightly fetal with chin on knees in yet another North American bathroom, de-veiled, too pretty for words, maybe the Prettiest Girl Of All Time (Prettiest G.O.A.T.), knees to chest, slew-footed by the radiant chill of the claw-footed tub?s porcelain, Molly?s had somebody lacquer the tub in blue, lacquer, she?s holding the bottle, recalling vividly its slogan for the past generation was The Choice of a Nude Generation, when she was of back-pocket height and prettier by far than any of the peach-colored titans they?d gazed up at, his hand in her lap her hand in the box and rooting down past candy for the Prize, more fun way too much fun inside her veil on the counter above her, the stuff in the funnel exhausted though it?s still smoking thinly, its graph reaching its highest spiked prick, peak, the arrow?s best descent, so good she can?t stand it and reaches out for the cold tub?s rim?s cold edge to pull herself up as the white- party-noise reaches, for her, the sort of stereophonic precipice of volume to teeter on just before the speaker?s blow, people barely twitching and conversations strettoing against a ghastly old pre-Carter thing saying ?We?ve Only Just Begun,? Joelle?s limbs have been removed to a distance where their acknowledgement of her commands seems like magic, both clogs simply gone, nowhere in sight, and socks oddly wet, pulls her face up to face the unclean medicine-cabinet mirror, twin roses of flame still hanging in the glass?s corner, hairof the flame she?s eaten now trailing like the legs of wasps through the air of the glass she uses to locate the de-faced veil and what?s inside it, loading up the cone again, the ashes from the last load make the world's best filter: this is a fact. Breathes in and out like a savvy diver? ?and is knelt vomiting over the lip of the cool blue tub, gouges on the tub?s lip revealing sandy white gritty stuff below the lacquer and porcelain, vomiting muddy juice and blue smoke and dots of mercuric red into the claw-footed trough, and can hear again and seems to see, against the fire of her closed lids? blood, bladed vessels aloft in the night to monitor flow, search-lit helicopters, fat fingers of blue light from one sky, searching."

"I spent a lot of time as a volunteer in a nursing home in Amherst last summer. I was reading Dante's Divine Comedy to an old man, Mr. Shulman. One day, I asked him where he was from. He said, 'Just east of here, the Rockies.' I said, 'Mr. Shulman, the Rockies are west of here.' He did a voil? with his hands, and then said, 'I move mountains.' That stuck with me. Fiction either moves mountains or it's boring; it moves mountains or it sits on its ass."

"I think it's easy to stop smoking; it's just hard not to commit a felony after you stop."

"I think I was very often bored as a child, but boredom is not what I knew it as?what I knew was that I worried a lot"

"I think one of the reasons that I feel empty after watching a lot of TV, and one of the things that makes TV seductive, is that it gives the illusion of relationships with people. It?s a way to have people in the room talking and being entertaining, but it doesn?t require anything of me. I mean, I can see them, they can?t see me. And that they?re there for me, and I can, I can receive from the TV, I can receive entertainment and stimulation. Without having to give anything back but the most tangential kind of attention. And that is very seductive."

"I think serious art is supposed to make us confront things that are difficult in ourselves and in the world."

"I want to tell you,' the voice on the phone said. 'My head is filled with things to say.' 'I don't mind,' Hal said softly. 'I could wait forever.' 'That's what you think,' the voice said. The connection was cut."

"I think there must be probably different types of suicides. I'm not one of the self-hating ones. The type of like I'm shit and the world'd be better off without poor me type that says that but also imagines what everybody'll say at their funeral. I've met types like that on wards. Poor-me-I-hate-me-punish-me-come-to-my-funeral. Then they show you a 20 X 25 glossy of their dead cat. It's all self-pity bullshit. It's bullshit. I didn't have any special grudges. I didn't fail an exam or get dumped by anybody. All these types. Hurt themselves. I didn't want to especially hurt myself. Or like punish. I don't hate myself. I just wanted out. I didn't want to play anymore is all. I wanted to just stop being conscious. I'm a whole different type. I wanted to stop feeling this way. If I could have just put myself in a really long coma I would have done that. Or given myself shock I would have done that. Instead."

"I think the world divides neatly into those who are excited by the managed induction of terror and those who are not. I do not find terror exciting. I find it terrifying. One of my basic goals is to subject my nervous system to as little total terror as possible. The cruel paradox of course is that this kind of makeup usually goes hand in hand with a delicate nervous system that's extremely easy to terrify."

"I was always either so unreasonably and pointlessly happy that no one place could seem to contain me, or so melancholy, so sick and silly with sadness that there was no place I could stomach the thought of entering. I hated it here. And I have never been as happy as when I was here. And these two things together confront me with the beak and claws of the True."

"I was looking at my sneakers and making my feet alternately pigeon-toed and then penguin-toed on the bedroom's blue carpet."

"I think the main function of contemporary irony is to protect the speaker from being interpreted as naive or sentimental."

"I wish you way more than luck."