“Lotte wanted Francoise to stay the night, but she wouldn’t. Francoise thought of movies, usually thrillers, in which the hero gets out of bed during the night, dresses and slips out, leaving a beautiful woman asleep and unaware. Francoise wished she could leave like that, but her film was a realistic one. As she walked back to her apartment she thought that getting out of the relationship had been as awkward and messy as Lotte’s pulling her finger out of Francoise’s ass.” LoveSexHeartbreakLgbtqLoss Of Love Book:Before: A Novel : With Stories 1987-1992 Source: Before: A Novel : With Stories 1987-1992
“Maybe it wasn’t that job particularly; maybe it was just working for someone else. It’s so brutal and tiring, the way it can push you down and knock the heart out of you. It’s not getting up at a certain time and arriving at a certain place at a certain time and leaving at a certain time and coming back again at a certain time — it’s knowing that you have to. What’s worse is that, through age or job-experience or academic qualification or sheer good luck, one adult is in a position to order and insult and abuse and shout at another adult who isn’t in a position to reply in kind. It makes everyone a tin god. Everyone likes having slaves to beat, as they’re beaten themselves. And working on the grind wears you out. After a week of it you’re so tired that you use the weekend just to catch up on your rest before going back to another week of it.” WorkClass StruggleGlasgowScottish Fiction Book:The Book of Man Source: The Book of Man
“When we attach to a problem, we make the problem worse. When we attach to a solution, we make the problem worse.” ZenZen Buddhism Book:Nothing Extra: Notes On the Zen Life Source: Nothing Extra: Notes On the Zen Life
“Zen probably won’t solve a single one of our problems. What it might do is help us relate differently to what we consider problems.” ZenZen Buddhism Book:Kill Your Self: Life After Ego Source: Kill Your Self: Life After Ego
“Render unto meditation the things that are meditation’s, and unto medication the things that are medication’s.” MeditationDepressionZenMedicationZen Buddhism Book:Kill Your Self: Life After Ego Source: Kill Your Self: Life After Ego
“I had an eviction notice and a handgun, but I didn’t make any connection between them. Then I read about the invisible hand of the market, and it totally made sense. I wasn’t getting enough work as a musician, and I wasn’t getting hired at different jobs I applied for, so it was time to diversify.” SexLove StoryPhoenixCrime FictionArizonaNoirClass StruggleAdam Smith Book:One for My Baby Source: One for My Baby
“You cuckold the poor bastard, then you turn into his marriage counselor.” SexLove StoryPhoenixCrime FictionArizonaNoir Book:One for My Baby Source: One for My Baby
“He was shot in the chest while sitting in a friend’s car in Scottsdale. The killing was somehow related to drugs, no one knows exactly how. Or maybe Sophia knows, but she’s not admitting to it. She talks about him in glowing terms, describes their relationship as “perfect”, and yet says he used to hit her. Things weren’t easy when he was alive, and they haven’t gotten easier since his death. She works in her family’s restaurant and doesn’t have much money, which is why she still lives in the barrio. She tells me about a time when she woke in the middle of the night and found a man in her bedroom. He’d broken in through a window. She screamed at him to get out, and he said, “It’s okay. It’s okay,” and left. She now keeps a gun under her bed.” LoveSexMemoirDeath PenaltyPhoenixArizonaTrue CrimeWitnessing Death Book:Why I Watch People Die Source: Why I Watch People Die
“Soon it will be different. Soon there will be a night when we’re in my car and she’s screaming, raging, stabbing herself in the arm with a knife she’s pulled from her purse. Blood all over her, me and the dashboard. Me tearing up my shirt to bind her arm with. Her crying and saying she’s sorry. Everything being different, and then there being nothing between us.” LoveSexMemoirPhoenixArizonaTrue CrimeWitnessing Death Book:Why I Watch People Die Source: Why I Watch People Die
“The only ones who ever went to a Tory conference with good intentions were the IRA.” GlasgowScottish Hard BastardsScottish Fiction Book:Get Out as Early As You Can Source: Get Out as Early As You Can
“I was seven years old when The Exorcist came out. I remember the grown-ups talking about it. I remember one grown-up saying she had to sleep with the light on for months after seeing it. I remember another saying he had to go on pills for his nerves after he saw it.” Horror MoviesThe Exorcist Book:When the Light-Bulb Is Bare: Essays on Horror and Noir Source: When the Light-Bulb Is Bare: Essays on Horror and Noir