Quotessence
Home / Books / The Goodbye Song

The Goodbye Song

Book by Karl Kristian Flores · 28 quotes · The Goodbye Song, Sadness, Loneliness

Filter quotes by topic

AllThe Goodbye SongSadnessLonelinessIdentitySocietyRelationshipsHeartbreakMissing SomeoneArtLoveWritingAttractionGrowing OldHeartacheRomanceSad QuotesBoredomFalling In LoveGrowing UpMeaning

The Goodbye Song Quotes

“There was a car in the back of the lot, under a fruitful tree. Feet on the steering wheel was a beautiful woman who sought and received harmony. She didn’t measure time by hours or minutes. She measured it by phrases like, “After this glass of red.” She never stopped the car until “the right final song plays.” She didn’t count her days Monday–Friday, but existence to her was checkpointed by the names of people she met last. She didn’t listen to rules about when it was okay to fuck—the first date or third—because when the moments asked for love, she had it. She didn’t sleep when it was dark, she slept when she was fully exhausted, and so worked until drainage, trusting her body was smart enough to solve itself during sleep. She was sleeping right now—aged with the kind of thin wrinkles that told you resveratrol gave a good fight. This was a woman embracing the wild, various interests of the heart. You may have thought freedom was attained by irresponsibility, by the immature seeking the easy, but it took great discipline to be free. You could call her homeless or you could call her earthbound, indecisive or multi-talented, unemployed or honest, spacey or intelligent. What good were words to describe a kind of radiant harmony best explained by her accomplished snoring?”

FreedomBeautyIdentityHarmonyAgingIndividualityAccomplishmentCharmIndividualismThe Goodbye Song
Book:The Goodbye Song
Create image

“People don’t know what to do when they encounter someone different. History hides a whole world of talented people we have never known because bright minds surrendered to the advice of small thinkers. “You got a great voice, kid—now go check on the cattle and don’t forget to lock the entrance.” And you spent so much time trying to convince everyone to appreciate some small idea or gift. They won’t know. They will never understand ideas until they happen. They don’t believe in start-ups, but love success stories. They won’t encourage your singing career, but love the radio. We ought to fly away from everyone and everything and right when we’ve launched far enough in space to risk no return, we can then come back to earth as us.”

InspirationMotivationFreedomHistoryTalentIdentityIndividualityUniquenessThe Goodbye SongFollowing Your Dreams
Book:The Goodbye Song
Create image

“Diary, do you know the best part of an ice cream bar? It’s the end part after you’ve eaten most of the bar, where the rectangular base chocolate flake pokes out. You have to tilt your head and bite off the bottom scrap of chocolate. Yeah. That place. I always lick it a few times too. Why is it so interesting? Because it’s definitive...it’s something again. The whole bar is predictable until you reach its finale, where the texture is its own. If people were ice creams, most would slip out of the stick, never deciding to be, never knowing they haven’t decided. We must be our own surface.”

IdentityIndividualityMeaningFinding YourselfUniquenessIce CreamThe Goodbye Song
Book:The Goodbye Song
Create image

“The shit thing about beauty is only another can redeem it. You can love yourself, but because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, those without beholders aren’t beautiful. They cannot trick themselves into thinking they are. Someone has to say it. Someone has to say, “You are beautiful.” One’s beauty is like the classic fallen tree; “If no one was near the tree when it fell, did it really fall?” If people called you a beautiful baby and now you’ve grown, are you still beautiful?”

BeautifulBeautySadnessSocietyLonelinessIdentitySelf LoveInsecurityThe Goodbye SongBeauty Is Skin Deep
Book:The Goodbye Song
Create image

“We cannot know everything. We cannot do everything. We are what we chose to have known. We are what we ended up doing. This condition is why you could look around and tell people apart. Time is ticking and we are all fugitives fleeing from random death. And we all flee differently. Thus, with the responsibility of choice, humanity is magical this way.”

PeopleDeathRelationshipsSocietyIdentityPersonalityMortalityFriendshipsThe Goodbye SongCreating Yourself
Book:The Goodbye Song
Create image

“Organize their money on a chopping board. Sort out your worth. $15,000 for outdated textbooks K-12. $1,000 for a lifetime of flu vaccinations. $8 an hour to help someone else make money. $300 a year for food coupons. $1,000 additional salary for any job that has a chance of expected death. $600 co-pay on medication for an illness they cause you. $2,000 for social security. $15,000 for pension. $150,000 for the average life insurance policy. $250,000 for a doctor’s fatal mistake. $350,000 if the doctor made it in a different state. 2/5 of a soul lost in the workplace. 3/5 of a soul lost to fuck for food. $4,000 to bury someone in the soil. And there you have you. Easy to make. Affordable. Special.”

PeopleGovernmentMoneySocietyIdentityScaryWorthWorking ClassThe Goodbye Song
Book:The Goodbye Song
Create image

“The Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Transportation, and other bureaus reserve that a budget for a human life is worth anywhere from 4-10 million dollars. Like a sports car. Like a construction site. Or an airplane. As if the mysterious gift of consciousness could fit in the box of a W-2 form. To them, we are 4 inches of digital ink on a computer screen. Money: if we can’t get rid of it, we can at least admit it doesn’t deserve us.”

PeopleGovernmentMoneySocietyIdentityScaryWorthWorking ClassThe Goodbye Song
Book:The Goodbye Song
Create image

“The wide-eyed professor lectured, on the verge of tears, and when class ended, the students closed their notebooks shut and asked of her plans for the weekend, which was answered politely, but with a tinge of sadness, for the professor feared her personhood, which had in her lesson plan existed truly only minutes ago, was already being reduced to the small, meaningless matters of tomorrow.”

SocietyLonelinessIdentityMeaningUnseenThe Goodbye SongUnheardConversationsPersonhood
Book:The Goodbye Song
Create image

“Mr. Halsworth paced stiffly around the classroom and tapped his pointer stick to the chalkboard with “Darwinism” written on the center, dead- center, the kind of dead-centeredness so as to safely and absolutely hide his embarrassed uncertainty of why there was electricity in his brain, seven guided octillion atoms in his body, standing on an earth of perfect living conditions, and intuition of a God in his gut.”

GodReligionUniverseFreedomAtheismIdentityCertaintyThe Goodbye SongAtheists
Book:The Goodbye Song
Create image

“Regret isn’t a strong enough motivator. They tell you to travel because if you don’t, you’ll regret it down the road. And so everyone did things that stemmed from a negative origin. Sex because I’ll get old. Dieting because I’ll get fat. Work because I’ll be poor. Success to prove my doubters wrong. But desire must derive from the action. It must be the thing that supplies us with a reason. The rest is negative fuel. We must jump over the crack in the cliff not because we’d regret never doing it, but because the other side of the rock calls to us. We must be drawn to the activity itself and let today lead us, rather than allow an invisible future do the haunting. We must live in additions. There’s a difference between “Oh, at least I don’t regret it” versus “Wow, that was a beautiful train I took.”

PhilosophyInspirationMotivationIdentityAdventureRegretTravelMeaningThe Goodbye SongRisks
Book:The Goodbye Song
Create image

“The reasons of even the tiniest human gesture are the only thing that separate us from a rock that falls because of gravity. Reasons are all we have, so we might as well make them beautiful ones. Everything expires, except our decisions. Choice is immortal. They are like indelible soulwaves to the universe. Why climb higher and higher when you can ride the straight, rare line that is truth?”

PhilosophyTruthBeautyIdentityMoralityDecisionsMeaningChoiceThe Goodbye SongReasons
Book:The Goodbye Song
Create image

“Pretty faces have distracted incoming hands ready to stab. Sex has disguised arguments. Politeness has prevented confrontation. Laughing has slowed down revelation. Emotions have been misinterpreted as agreements. Judgment has hampered our listening. Perhaps, for now, we are more accurately defined by what we say or think and not how we seem or look.”

HumanityRelationshipsSocietyIdentityFutureReflectionTricksSecretsThe Goodbye SongPersonhood
Book:The Goodbye Song
Create image

“If only I could know I’m dead... and think about my death... I’ll miss the thinking... my own opinions... consciousness... something to experience something...looking down and seeing my hands... Wow... hello mind... I know my fingers so well... I like them... okay...what’s going to happen now?... I feel it, I feel it, it’s coming, right here, right here, hurry... This was all so lucky.”

ThinkingLifeDeathConsciousnessIdentitySelf LoveLast WordsThe Goodbye SongFinal MomentsLast Wish
Book:The Goodbye Song
Create image