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Famous Karl Kristian Flores Quotes

“My antidote is to constantly create a world for me and stick to it. I don’t go out much. When I do, people start planting thoughts in my head that I don’t want. I would go home and think their thoughts. Bad seeds... unimportant seeds and I lose my streak of knowing what’s true. That’s where I’m at. I’ve this need to be sensitive to my inner voice. And what feeds that are movies I like... the book I’m reading... some paintings. Instead, when I am with others, my mind is occupied with repetitious jokes, and their envy, and ego. My antidote is the equivalent of a cozy castle of reality—protecting things and people I choose," she said. "A customized balance of my favorite worlds.”

LifeSocietyLonelinessIdentityPersonalitySolitudeIntrovertSensitivityIntroversionIntroverts
Book:A Happy Ghost
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“Freedom sounds phenomenal to the preoccupied young. But when one is an adult and has “free days” there is simply not much to do. Even in Los Angeles, where everything was. There was an unspoken spell of solitude cast on the city. Once one has been to the main parts of town, and had their fair share at the beach, Los Angeles turned unbreathably lonely. The biggest risks took place in grocery stores where a quiet shopper chose to switch to multi-grain bread after two years on sourdough. One could use their afternoons to create art— maybe writing a poem or painting a picture—all of which pass time but are isolating activities in and of themselves. The child begs for freedom and the adult wants to be told what to do.”

FreedomGrowing UpSocietyLonelinessAdultsBoredomLos AngelesAdulthoodLaLa La Land
Book:A Happy Ghost
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“Do people really like the way they’re fucked? he thought. Do wives like their husband’s faces? Does my weak vocabulary annoy these intelligent CEOs? How long can I speak until I bother someone? They will all smile and shake your hand, but I am afraid I am just another omelet missing the ingredient they want. I am the wrong piano key fiercely played by a pianist’s regretful pinky finger in a concert hall blaring false to the audience’s disturbed ears that certainly caught the note but whose controlled heads do not dare betray their feigned enjoyment.”

LifeSocietyLonelinessPianoSuspicionQuestionsDistrustOpinionsA Happy GhostAndrei
Book:A Happy Ghost
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“He thought about doing more reading. It seemed the most comforting activity to do, except for one issue. Unlike a new movie, there was no one to immediately turn and talk to about a book. All books are strays. Books were read at the same time they were unknown at the same time they were revived at the same time they were forgotten. There was no agreed-upon trend of a novel. People found them on their own and all at different stages of life. This was why it was special to have the same favorite authors as a stranger, since both souls were in need of and privately searching for the same thing. A chapter could mean so much. But because Andrei could not share his excitement with anyone without misunderstanding or respectfully feigned interest, he ruled out reading as an activity. And it takes too long to find someone who lived for the same page as you.”

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Book:A Happy Ghost
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“Andrei sometimes wondered how much a river would change Los Angeles. He pictured a long stream of water that divided the city, much like the River Thames or the Seine. Rivers nourished. The water happily rewrote the aisles of streetlamps and transformed one’s nighttime walk into a feature film. It carried boats filled with a surveying crowd that waved back at any brandishing hand on land that tried. It fostered lunch dates, amusing dares, and a reference for the lost. Andrei had spent one summer abroad and met these rivers. He was astonished at the difference in conversations the Europeans had with him. They were simple and alive. The pubs helped. The accents, too. Was it the rain that reminded? he speculated. The museums? The red buses? The cheap flights to any neighboring country? So—what was it about the geography of LA that made connection impossible? Just then, the sun glared at him. He glared back.”

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Book:A Happy Ghost
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“There was also a term for bikers called “target fixation.” When a rider looked at something for too long and focused on a passing object, or any small distraction to the left or right of him, he had an increased chance of colliding with that object. It was extremely dangerous to fixate. Any concentration expended that was not ahead of the rider oftentimes resulted in severe injury or death. A biker who wanted to live must not be thrown off course. And after miles and miles of riding, of looking ahead, of sixty mile per hour winds piercing his neck, the gloss of his eyes hardening, he naturally never target fixated on things or people either.”

DeathFreedomLonelinessIndependenceMotorcycleBikersLone WolfMotorcyclesBikesTarget Fixation
Book:A Happy Ghost
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“It was difficult to point these folks out, to put them on trial. How could one dislike a nice person? They said all the right things. Some people like David even went to the extent of being self-deprecating. It was a strategy of invulnerability. For example, they might apologetically acknowledge they were “talking too much” or sprinkle phrases like “Ah! I’m so self-absorbed” so as to exclude themselves from any claim of narcissism. Or when they achieved things, they perfectly said they were grateful and honored. Though at home, they hungrily harbored self-interest and greed. People praised their humility and, lacking the patience to notice that tiny bullseye of falseness, called those people humble. All it took for the humble people to be humble was to break the fourth wall of ego. To announce there was a snake in the room allowed them to never be suspected of being a serpent. No one saw the serpent. But one detected when it was there. It bothered a listener quietly. Some blockade prevented Andrei’s soul from resting.”

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Book:A Happy Ghost
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“The second I get into a car and we start driving, I imagine a fatal crash to the last detail. When I’m in the liquor store, I imagine a robbery by the time the cashier tells me the total. Every plane ride is an 8-hour movie in my head of me planning what I would say to the stranger on my right if the pilot announced the plane was crashing. I always imagine these scenarios. Family dying. Earthquakes. The earth suddenly falling because gravity left the party. It’s exhausting. Yesterday someone was afraid of me. I was bicycling with Austin and we saw a dead deer on the road. It was so large. Austin nearly fell off his bike when he saw it. Then he looked over at me confused. He asked why I didn't react to it. I told him it was because I’d already imagined one six miles back. There are always two worlds playing in my head at once: what’s in front of me and what could be.”

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Book:The Goodbye Song
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“Some people only needed you for transactions. Don’t let sweet personalities fool you into thinking they’ll hold your hand if it’s got blood on it. If one day, you lost a leg, your boss wouldn’t close the store branch for you. If you lost a home, your old classmates wouldn’t lend you theirs. If you decided to give up, your circle will say you made the right decision. No one’s going to save you, but they love meeting you. And so suddenly, when you lose, the whole world turns on you. A freak— as if alienation was only one amputation, one home, one failure away.”

SocietyLonelinessSolitudeIsolationAlienationHelplessnessOutcastThe Goodbye SongOutsiderAmputation
Book:The Goodbye Song
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“A lonely shivering afterward awaits your last sentence, like the wind that blows on the last man standing in a war, heaving on a battlefield no one will remember. Creation isn’t hard. Sleeping in two places at once is hard. Once you create, someone else holds you—on their desk. In the backseat. On their phones. Between their palms. Behold eternal agitation. Writers embark on a revolutionary idea only to be congratulated by katydids. Hearts spill on 8.5x11’s, scratching away their disguise, and then return to lunchtime feeling less than an inch themselves. How do you expect to survive?”

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Book:The Goodbye Song
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“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.”

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Book:The Goodbye Song
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“Companionship will be made possible from enduring lonely nights, leaving the wrong drinking buddies, books and benches, concerts and stadiums, and universities and clothing stores. These were the conditions necessary for companionship. You will answer the question all souls ask: How will I find you? The answer: Truth magnetizes to truth, as long as it repels temptation.”

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Book:The Goodbye Song
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“Sometimes I’ll be in my room and recall a terrible memory. I’ll laugh ridiculously into my bed or when I remember an embarrassing moment, I’ll curl up, crinkling myself with blankets I wish could swallow me away into another world. I probably look crazy—some girl reacting to her own head, so I make sure to say what I’m thinking out loud in order for the ghosts to understand. They may have seen a lot, but they’re not mind readers and may appreciate a backstory or two.”

HumorLonelinessBeing YourselfPrivacySecretsGhostsHumiliationEmbarrassmentThe Goodbye SongWeird Quotes
Book:The Goodbye Song
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“The Day: Wondering if I’m mental Wondering if you are Stretching my spine Masturbating then hating it Falling in love on aisle 12 Acting tough in public Singing in the shower Lotioning my untouched body Fretting about my skin Missing her again And when I’m about to sleep, I wish I could just fast forward To wondering if I’m mental.”

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Book:The Goodbye Song
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“He had tried so hard that day. Andrei looked toward the smoke, searching for a face, and found none. He knew there was no reward for his life. It would continue to be excruciating for him to venture into the world with stakes and yet receive no friendly consolation. No audience. There were only things and him. The state of aloneness was the condition comets came with. Oh, what a hand could do! A friend! A touch on the shoulder! But this loud torment of silence would serve as the rhythm of a much larger song that played in him—the tune of ceaseless risk. The song commences at the first streak of undertaking. And the lyrics of progress are never congratulated. How could others toast to a victory they did not understand? That they could not see?”

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Book:A Happy Ghost
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“And this ghost believed he was in the last phase of life. He considered his anesthesia an inevitable chapter of a human being. After a certain amount of naked bodies, blood on the walls, and vomit on the floor, the color white will look gray. Once he surrendered to gray, the uncaring world proved his worldview. He walked the sunny streets and knew no passerby would ever save him from his rainstorm. He could cry all the way to work and back unstopped. The unconcern of the world confirmed to him that he was a ghost, not only because he was deadened from the hotel, but because when he left and stepped outside it, he knew, indisputably, everyone else was dead to everyone else. To be alive is to play the role of ghost.”

SocietyLonelinessSolitudeDepressionIndifferenceGhostsNumbnessA Happy Ghost
Book:A Happy Ghost
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