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Famous Adam Levin Quotes

“Most people, Gurion, most people do not violate boundaries, do not defy governance, and most of them come out intact, whereas very few of those who act lawlessly do. And that is why school is so much about following rules. You are here, above all else, to learn to live lawfully for the rest of your life. You are here to learn how to exist in cages without acting as if they are cages, to live like mensches despite being locked in cages. You are here to learn to survive in the world. That is the most basic purpose of our educational system, and it is a high purpose.”

SchoolLawSurvivalCagesSurviveLawlessnessSocial Control
Book:The Instructions
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“You can render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, but if you don't keep from Caesar that which is yours, Caesar will take some, and than take some more, and if you don't put a stop to it, though you won't lose everything - you can't lose everything; there's things he can't take, at least one or two - a time will soon come when you'll think you've lost everything, when you'll think all is Caesar's, and by then you'll be too weak to take what's yours back, too tired to remember what was yours to begin with, and you'll end up, perversely, scheming for his leavings and, even more perversely, grateful when you get them.”

DignityControlPowerlessness
Book:The Instructions
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“Don't you feel as though you could love everything starting tomorrow, and everything could love you, if only you took an action to set into motion the coming of our new tomorrow and its tomorrow and that one's tomorrow? Shotgun loaded hand on the pump and no matter who you damage you're still a false prophet, but we drink chocolate milk and then we get muscles and smash down the droves with fists like hammers and then we pump the fists in the air for victory. I be the prophet of the doom that is you. You are the mess in messiah.”

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Book:The Instructions
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“This is what I learned while I walked Hattie home: Palmetto bugs are colossal roaches that thrive in hot climates and smell like Amaretto. They prefer the outdoors, but sometimes get lost and turn up in your house. If, as a five-year-old girl in Gainesville, Florida, you step into a steaming, oddly redolent shower, feel a light tap way up on your thigh, reflexively grab whatever just tapped you, find in your fist a roach with the heft of an operable pencil stub, fling it away, find a sharply bent leg affixed by its barbs to your middle finger’s meaty bottom phalange, repeatedly try to shake the leg off, repeatedly fail to shake the leg off, then sit in the tub and cry and cry, you’ll become a lyric poet, and your stomach will, from that day forward, repeatedly try to empty itself whenever you catch the scent of Amaretto. So, gum or no gum, no kiss good night. We dated nine months.”

NewyorkerAlotofthingshavehappened
Author:Adam Levin
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“Fuck them,” says Susan Falls. This is the first time, in her entire life, that she has employed an extra-cerebral profanity. Though in fantasy she has often used swear words, she has never spoken one. It feels good, and it occurs to Susan that, as stupid as most people sound when they use profanities, as stupid as she must have sounded just now, the feeling of power that just rushed through her, from inner labia to thyroglossal duct, the trace sensations leftover from just now, just now when she said the word fuck, make sounding stupid more than worthwhile. “Fuck them, then,” Carla Ribisi agrees, and it is the hottest motherfucking thing Susan has ever heard.”

Profanities
Book:Hot Pink
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