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Famous Karl Kristian Flores Quotes

“People acted how they looked like. The reactions of the world to one’s appearance were an invisible estimation of one’s perception of themselves. The beautiful and the hideous each got treated a certain way—experiencing wildly different kinds of years. The beautiful were told phrases the hideous never heard. The beautiful struggled more with envy, while the hideous spent more time practicing courage, for things never easily bent their way. Every person accepted how they were treated and sank into that role. It showed in the way they sat. How their heads turn. When they spoke. If they spoke. Mannerisms were then not a matter of individual personality, but collective decree. Andrei would notice in a stranger all the things their body did, memorize them, and project them imaginarily on a different person. The imagined transference would never work! It seemed odd, like a miscalculation, to visualize a gorgeous Adonis walk with his head down and fidgety fingers the way a shy man did. There was undeniably a pattern of traits between strangers, courtesy of the strangers they meet.”

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Book:A Happy Ghost
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“Life was never about survival. For a long time, it was proposed that all living organisms shared a single purpose: to survive—but this was not the appropriate case for humans. Survival was all along but a secondary basis to man, while attendance to life was the first. One must secure something to survive for, as the cells of the straightforward body will, regardless of permission, do their job. Men do not breathe without air first around to inhale. A sailor cannot know his passion for sailing without an existing body of water. Similarly, a man can only survive if there is something larger in him that lives—not a beating heart, but a moving one. If he only “holds on,” prolonging preservation and supervising health, there is nothing in that lingering lifeform to endanger or threaten. And since no system of security can defend from death’s next play, there is no use in mortals wearing armor. The essence of chance had loitered since the beginning of time, anticipating a being who adhered to its expressions. The human priority is one’s comet.”

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Book:A Happy Ghost
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“It reminds me of sitting window seat on a plane. I look out and onto the ground and I see everyone’s little houses. They’ve got their own perfect square of land, with a roof of their own, with a tree of their own, their own fence. There’s something so artificial to it when you zoom out. Our own tree in the front yard may be large, but they aren’t rooted in a true forest. Their house could be painted gold, but the street isn’t. Everything we have is just enough for our eyes to see. I feel like we’re meant for more. More than decorations. Sometimes, even though I know it’s not possible, I feel like everyone deserves their own forest.”

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Book:The Goodbye Song
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“Our circumstance at birth is that we are placed on a planet with no prior choice and appointed sensation and awareness—and then nothing after it. There won’t be an opportunity to look back or to be ashamed. What to do? Walk the rock and see more of the earth? Fill our playtime with the current inventions? No, I want to go toward other people. Other moving humans. No technology or machine in the world could match the pricelessness of life. It’s a universally precious. It can’t be saved and so has the most value.”

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Book:A Happy Ghost
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“And after some months, the exposure to beauty and wealth took a toll on his mind. He could not pinpoint it at first. Andrei thought human change came from decisions, but actually it came from observation. The brain was a special piano whose song history was never forgotten; one wrong key could destroy the instrument and necessitate years of healing. For Andrei, the multitude of wealthy guests, their walks, accommodation requests, secrets, women, and jewels had achieved his natural lust for luxury ten times over and turned him into a complete ghost.”

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Book:A Happy Ghost
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“Sometimes, a feeling would creep over Andrei. And actually, it would creep over the dead man’s son beside him, too. A particular awareness would swallow them both individually, in different moments in their lives, for a few seconds. They would lie in bed and out of nowhere, freeze as they remembered that all sensation would end. Everything they’d worked on would be entirely erased. Movement would cease. The visor of consciousness would be taken off. Andrei, and his new friend, would someday no longer have the capacity to try. And they would no longer remember that they could try. They would simply no longer remember.”

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Book:A Happy Ghost
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“He turned to his side, with the kind of creepily glazed look our eyeballs make when we’re alone in a room, brushing our teeth, chewing, or wiping our ass. His blanket was still wet with warm semen. He thought about his father. Then he remembered he needed to wash the clothes in the laundromat. His semen dripped and he thought about bird feeding. There was one bird who loved his safflower seeds. He ground his teeth and imagined what it was like to be born in Africa. He reflected on his most recent online English tutor lesson learning from a native speaker. He was fluent, but it paid to feel like you had a friend somewhere. Then he thought of peanut butter. The thoughts of the human mind transition so quickly that it only ever seems strange when we say it aloud to someone else. Otherwise, we’re all secretly freaks with our mouths shut. He laid there ugly.”

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Book:The Goodbye Song
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“Whenever he contemplated death, he felt he would miss thinking most of all. There was a delicate pleasure of thought and sensation. The awareness of it. The inner voice of thoughtless reasoning, effortless analyzing, ceaseless tingling. It was the only thing a person had if everything were taken away from them. It was what continued to exist before they touched any object or heard any sound once awaken from slumber. That personal conversation was irreplaceable. Andrei would be upset at death, whenever it came, because of what it entailed: no longer being able to look down and see one’s hands. No longer being able to feel a breathing belly. No longer able to wonder, or to remember a memory. It surprised him, in such a stupid, sad way, that there was no save button in life. Yes, yes, we die, I get it, he thought, but for some reason, he’d pathetically assumed he could take something with him. That death would be okay because at least he would still be able to reflect. In theory, he would die and get to say, “Whew, I died. Now let’s think about it.” But he wouldn’t. All the memories he had earned would wash away instantly. The work done on oneself could not be transferred. He would not trim his fingernails or have the chance to check out another woman’s ass ever again. Death was flat. Aliveness had texture.”

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Book:A Happy Ghost
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“Persistence used to be his goal; perhaps, he once believed, if he endured more days, eventually life would come together, either ultimately or through a single event. Books and art and politics said to keep going. But while persistence was other men’s answer, their conflicts were not his. How could a man totally trust history’s advice when today, the sparrow breaks its old route and flies over that jacaranda tree and not the usual? Persistence was not Andrei’s answer. He needed deviation.”

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Book:A Happy Ghost
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“He'd told Alejandra this many times, but his comments had been so small in the grand scheme of things. She now knew that the largest parts of people escaped in tiny ways, tiny words, and tiny looks. One was not permitted to let themselves go and because they gripped so tightly trying to keep together the puppet they presented, parts of identity snuck their way out of holes, and released, transforming into something like a harmless quip their lover would forget. But their lover would remember it. Afterward. The schedule of human understanding was almost always set: afterward.”

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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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“I think we all have to meet more people. Help others, be hurt by others, learn from them, fight with them, listen to them, and see things. Over time, one starts to develop a universal voice that is all-fitting— soothing to grandmas, yet exciting to kids. Loud enough to cheer in a stadium and soft enough to whisper in church. A voice that makes sense both to a hungry man on the street and a university professor. An experienced body breeds an encompassing voice.”

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Book:The Goodbye Song
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“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.”

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Book:The Goodbye Song
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“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?”

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Book:The Goodbye Song
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“His generation was uncertain if God existed. Having had parents who were religious and breaking off from them, they had associated childhood apathy with religion. But larger than that, this generation was unsure why human life existed—and no matter what technology was invented, there was, in everyone, an incontestable hole. But the internet came, with its limitless span, and for the first time, something was vast enough to challenge that hole. To challenge God. The world needn’t question the universe when it was in the palm of their little hands.”

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Book:A Happy Ghost
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“Andrei always thought there was a fundamental eeriness to names. If a name had an adorable ring to it, like Bonnie or Milo, it was cute to say and hard to be angry at a Bonnie for long. People treated others the way their names sounded. If someone’s name was common, people would mostly see neutral characters—shy, kind, or good-natured. If one’s name was unusual, people had lazier associations and treated them as either a spectacle or an artist. If their name was a title commanding presence, the world’s reaction to them, however subtle, would naturally endow them with a confidence as easily handed to them as their name.”

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Book:A Happy Ghost
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“There’s so much ‘expression’ today you can’t hear the real problems. Maybe we switch tasks. To trust our current exhibitions can do their job. It is worth a try. A generation sacrificing their pride to save the future. Granted, our art is needed and could reveal our faults, but do evil men watch movies? Something soon must die. To trust the future will take care of itself is to deny an obvious and necessary revolution.”

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Book:The Goodbye Song
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“And suddenly the motorcyclist felt ignited, that was, in the most subtle spark of need: to live in that alternate, finer side of life that was within reach and waited to be taken. It occurred to him what he wanted. And as that butterfly of chance flew past the biker’s soul, he eyed it and caught the white-winged sign instantly. There, he said to himself, I’ll go. And he attended to that meteoric obligation—that dear, vivacious reality unveiled by leaping humans. The biker wanted to see what a certain future looked like, and excitedly leaned back on his Triumph, released the clutch, and pushing off on the rubber footrests, leaned high up in the air to his right and threw himself off the bike.”

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Book:A Happy Ghost
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