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Famous Chris Adrian Quotes

“Maybe I'm too crazy to be in a relationship," Henry said, which was his familiar response to Bobby's familiar discourse about the future. It felt like a grown-up thing to say, and like a difficult concession, and what he meant by it was I am trying as hard as I can and it's not enough for you or even Why can't my weak eccentricities be adorable to you, as yours are to me? But Bobby always heard it as a conversation stopper, childish and easy and glib.”

RelationshipsHonestyCrazinessEccentricityArguments
Book:The Great Night
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“She was doing just what it looked like she was doing, lying about, half-awake and half-asleep, passing the time and waiting for something to change. Because it seemed very clear to her, in those first few days, that what she felt was so intolerable that it couldn't possibly last, and if she did nothing to distract herself from it, she'd use it up, and then she'd be able to get up, and move about, and care once again about her duties to her people, about her constitutional obligations to dancing and singing and feasting and praising the movements of the stars. She didn't consider at all--she didn't dare to consider--that the sources of grief inside her might be inexhaustible.”

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Book:The Great Night
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“What she had done over the past year had required an equivalent expenditure of energy to a year-long sprint, and when she thought of it that way it was obviously an unreasonable thing to do. Remaining sane--clinging and grasping at it, seeking to please a propriety constructed by people whose boyfriends had never killed themselves--was in fact the most insane thing she could have done, and anyone properly equipped by the right kind of experience would understand that.”

DeathEnergyLossGriefSuicideInsanityMourningSanityPropriety
Book:The Great Night
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“She might do what the mortals did, and strain to convince herself that the death of her Boy and the loss of her husband had happened for some reason, that some restitution would be made for her, that she would be paid for her suffering with a truer and more tolerable understanding of the world, but she didn't think she had the muscles for it.”

DeathUnderstandingLossGriefImportanceMourningSignificanceReasonsRestitution
Book:The Great Night
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“But as surely as the moon rises and the sun sets, depravity passes down through the ages, because there is always a gap between who we are and who we should be, and our parents, molested by regret, conceive us under the false hope that we will be better than them, and everything they do, every hug and blow, only makes certain that we never will be.”

ShouldAgeCertainParentSunRegretMoonBlowWho We AreGapsHugDepravityFalse HopeSun SetMoon Rise
Book:The Children's Hospital
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“It takes four angels to oversee an apocalypse: a recorder to make the book that would be scripture in the new world; a preserver to comfort and save those selected to be the first generation; an accuser to remind them why they suffer; and a destroyer to revoke the promise of survival and redemption, and to teach them the awful truth about furious sheltering grace.”

WorldFirstsBookWould BeSufferingTeachGraceFourGenerationsComfortPromiseSurvivalAngelScriptureRedemptionAwfulNew WorldApocalypseFuriousSelectedDestroyersRecordersAccusers
Book:The Children's Hospital
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“It seemed a marvel to her that any mortal should suffer for lack of love, and yet she had never known a mortal who didn't feel unloved. There was enough love just in this ugly hallway, she thought, that no one should ever feel the lack of it again. She peered at the parents, imagining their hearts like machines, manufacturing surfeit upon surfeit of love for their children, and then wondered how something could be so awesome and so utterly powerless.”

FeelsShouldHeartChildrenEnoughSufferingParentKnownMachinesMedicineUglyMedicalMortalsPowerlessManufacturingHallwaysUnlovedLack Of LoveEnough Love
Book:The Great Night: A Novel
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