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Famous Karl Kristian Flores Quotes

“Withhold your trust from the critics, the scholars, the writers, the award-winners, the showrunners, because they will write about crime and decorate their art with crime, and it will bring you to tears, but identification of a burning building does not extinguish a fire. Knowing what is right doesn’t make us right. It makes us responsible.”

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“Is there not genius in the villain? In the criminal? A magic born in the beginnings of the tiniest of rebellions? When I think of someone who has to create a masterplan to rob a store, the valor of a pirate, or a malicious CEO trying to tear down competition, at least they have a point of view. They are uninhibited by the parameters of previous motion. They are electric imaginers. And they make their money by thinking. The originality of a criminal’s thoughts requires a freedom so rare to attain—and from there, brilliant masterplans, blueprints, trajectories, and other devices are employed. No one owns them and they defy odds with every offense. To have the mind of a criminal, but the heart of an angel would be ideal, but who promised ideal? It’s too bad the cleverest of things were corrupt and have made us call geniuses stupid. Maybe it’s circumstance, maybe it’s hereditary, but the greatest criminals have the creativity and courage like no other.”

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“Life is as uneventful as looking up right now and staring at your space. How dare men advise courage! It’s imagination we need. Our battlefield is not one of swords and smoke, but of quietness and boredom. If you attempt something extraordinary, it is by Latin prefix, ‘extra’, and no one will understand that part until it happens. And oftentimes, you can’t defeat the quiet with muscle, strength, or toughness, because the thing you are holding is too fragile and could therefore be consequently lost by your tight grip. You must therefore work the other muscle: faith”

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“The pub. It remained the only place in the world that had not evolved into anything more sophisticated. The buildings rose, the towers hit never- ending growth spurts, the concrete sidewalks turned to polycarbonate glass billboards, and the cars drove people. But the pubs—the pubs with their gritty melancholy—endured time. No matter how advanced this species grew to be, the human heart was never short of confusion and in need of the rugged, little lullaby of alcohol and alone time.”

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“People carry too many memories on their back and after a while it gets too hard to walk. The poets say you get stronger, but the scientists say that overworking the muscle deteriorates the muscle. There had been sensations Isaac wanted to feel, people to meet, and places to see, but the torture one had to endure to get to any one of those points required three to five suicides.”

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“Sometimes, in their wide-eyed, ashamed, fanatical temperament, their humanity spills out in a discomfort that is nearly frightening. But, we all harbor some form of innocent strangeness that we keep to ourselves—our fears, our obsessions, our questionable sanities. They are the reasons why we do things— routes we take, instruments we learn, and CDs we buy. It sounds like honey, but I’m not just being an essayist here. I do believe it. And it’s the truth because today, I’d like to share my strange with you.”

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“I was attracted to this old woman. It wasn’t because of the flesh, even though she carried with her the remnants of a stunning lady. I was drawn to her personhood. She was sort of a funny thing, that Margo. And in addition to a chosen sweetness, she had a rare humility that shines and caresses you at the same time. It leaves you asking: how’d she get there—to that place? When she looked at you, they were not with any ordinary pair of eyes. They were with eyes that read Ibsen, eyes that competed in tennis matches, that watched loved ones disappear into the ground, that undressed a lifetime of men, that saw the world and now looks at you.”

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“Do you know what I do sometimes? I look at buildings or up at the sky and because their plain features look like they could be from anywhere, I imagine I’m in your city. That we’re next to each other. That I’m somewhere different. If I want, I can be in New York at any time of the day and really believe it. It only lasts for a few seconds before I get dizzy.”

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“And here lies our conundrum: we hate the world when we talk about it, but if all of us hate the world for being mean, there is no world to hate. We’re stuck in theory and are entertaining an invisible villain. Up close, you get along with those supposed monsters. The world is made up of individual people who despise the world, but when meeting, they get along all the same. There is no evil society, only people we haven’t met yet.”

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“Well, I’ll tell you this, Mr. Michael. You’re going to walk in there, people are going to tell you things and they’ll say it’s true, but know this: instincts beat advice. Your instincts beat everyone else’s conviction. Including mine. What anyone ever tells you can absolutely expire the second something new happens. We already know what to do, sweetie. And most advice can be narrowed down to: it’s best you try again. But our instincts are a powerful tool, you ought to listen to them. And you know, Michael, it’s not always worth explaining to people. We are too rational to believe extraordinary things can happen sometimes. But”—she smiled—“the most extraordinary times I remember were when I quieted the other voices beside me and embraced the room. The other person. A look. Their voice. Their body. Timing. You’ll feel it Michael and it’s more important you snatch those moments right when they appear. Chase that. Does that make sense?”

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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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“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?”

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“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.”

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“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.”

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“Life moves too quick to ask for accommodation. Not only are people unable to assist you every step of the way, but they won’t always know how themselves. You are a reader of the moment and moments are everchanging, as we are, and so to merge with the virginity of time is to integrate yourself into the universe. The universe is always clearing the goal, revealing itself, and asks of you one thing: feed the world your intuition. Advice is finite.”

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“I think passions are a matter of chance. The most honest people I've ever met were those who didn't know what to do with their life. I don't blame them. There's a good chance many of our passions haven't been invented yet. I mean what are the odds? We're a young species. The conditions of our world should have nothing to do with what our heart loves.”

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“Look out the window. You ask yourself: how are we actually supposed to live? After we’ve eaten and slept well, what is there for us? Is this life supposed to be a kind of animal that fills itself with things like lunch, TV news, occasional travels, and then dies? Like a mortal doll poked with the same colored thumbtacks as everyone else. Eat. Masturbate. Heartbreak. Sleep. Perhaps the answer to a deep boredom is community—but what good are two people but another person to eat lunch, watch TV news, and travel mediocrely with, and also die? Humans don’t know their origins, which explains why we’re always confused and longing for some unattainable dimension from 18 to 80. Can we ever be more?”

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“It wasn’t only benches, Charlie found, that bore names on them. There were rocks with names, buildings with names, parks with names, streets with names, even tables with names. Charlie thought it was a wildly large ask for a man to expect people to know who he was after he’d left. It’s too hard to compete with the excited men today who want to be remembered tomorrow. But no one could ever live that long. We don’t remember Lincoln every hour, or Jackie Robinson every meal. Charlie supposed the only solace a man could own is knowing he did plenty of good things in the time he had. It was all we got and a noble insufficiency was enough. He also figured if you were going to make a bench, not to inscribe your name on it, but instead something awesome like, “This Bench Was Made with One Hand.” No fool was going to remember your name, for God’s sake. But they might laugh at a spectacle such as a one-handed achievement.”

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“Dear Pavement, The sun used to be the only thing to warm you, and now it’s body heat—a mingling recipe of human flesh and cockroach, of human flesh and rodent, of human flesh and tossed quarters. A cheek rests on you, a cheek capable of being kissed by a bishop, a cheek once held in a mother’s palm, a cheek that deserves more than the prickly pebbled pillow you are.”

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“You claim to want love, but how can that be if you have not yet met the person you love? Rather, you desire its advantages: touch, security, and company. Love is born from another person—their touch, their company, their ideas. Love is a hand that knocks on our doors and owns no door of its own for you to knock on. When dealing with people, we are each too unique and changing to be labeled and be fitted to another person’s prerequisite needs. And so, it is our lovers who introduce us to our desire. Until then, it is not love that we want. If we claim, alone in our homes, to so badly want love, or marriage, we likely want that other thing.”

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“One day, she told me her favorite color was green. Do you know how much green I see in a day? Enough to remember any other color ain’t her favorite. Green. That’s a whole lifetime with a girl whose face emerges on leaves, tennis courts, the billboard on every nearest passion pit, the emerald fabric of my curtains, hotel salads, on a crumpled Washington, and the two forest eyes of my own that look back at me in the mirror and say, “Diana #1, Diana #2.” Ain’t that a bite. One day, I will lay outside to daydream about her for so long, fungi will grow on my pathetic body, plaguing me with her favorite color. Will she love my algae then?”

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“Meet your partner. You think you’ve never seen them before, but you knew them. They were in your first breakup, your worst heartbreak, your old marriage, the honeymoon sex, in the alcohol swishes of finding out your spouse cheated, and in the times she leaned over the grass to kiss your cheek at picnics. Love was dancing in the same candidate who kissed you, the same nominee who hated you, and the plenty of people who tricked you. Love was dancing to the tango of your agreement to try. Love grows bigger and bigger, shaping itself more correctly to your happy heart.”

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“Toulouse is to lose. Good on us, That one never lied And said it’s still alive. A full life is a series Of incompletions. Whole with holes. Entirely fragmented. Carrying one-days, Sentences, Old lovers, And looks. Absolutes turn men and women Into machines that need Numbers to work. But people were never meant to work Just to live.”

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“Make tea. As the water boils, you think about the “her’s” like a love list. Valerie in the 4th grade, Naomi in the 6th, Linda in high school, Sammie in college, Camille from work, and the latest one to have signed your heart and left: Sophia. You think through each girl, wondering what she’s eating for breakfast. You miss them, not because you want a relationship, but because love only works in permanent marker.”

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“I won’t lie to you—I’ve walked around entire cities looking for Diana. It wasn’t my purpose for traveling, but it was my intention whenever I asked my pals if they wanted to walk around. She’s the reason my eyes scan crowds, why I buy certain show tickets, or attend daily mass. It has been hard. She left. And hell went out of business.”

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