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All I Quotes

“I suck the blood out of Ben's towel for what feels like hours. I lie down on the floor, the towel hanging from my mouth and spread out across my chest. I'm in bliss. I can't really describe how it feels to have another person's blood in your veins, feeding to your heart, even just a little bit: a human's blood, not a pig's, two legs, upright and elegant, hints of something---of foods and memories and experiences, of birth, of being ill and getting better, of love and grief and fear---in its flavor. I feel huge; I feel like, if I were to stand up and run toward my studio wall, I'd just break through it. Like I could trample on cars and people outside, whole families under one foot, roaring until shop windows shatter. The sun would be drawn to me and would be consumed by my hair, which would grow and grow and then spread across the sky and turn day into night. The ground would quake around me; little moles that had been sleeping would emerge from their holes, and rabbits from their burrows, and I'd pluck them out of the ground like bean shoots and swallow them whole.”

“I sucked in my lips and leaned against the camper door. "Which one is the real you? The charming rogue slash professional thief or the highly trained secret undercover agent?" Jack walked over and leaned his forearm against the door above my head, his gaze never leaving mine. "Which one do you want?" My pulse kicked up a notch and a white-hot heat shot through my veins. "I want the real you." Jack cupped my jaw, tilting my face back as his lips came down on mine. "You have the real me." I melted against him, drowning in his kiss. I wanted to go back to the time when there was trust between us and life hadn't gotten in the way. He lifted my hand and brushed his lips softly over my knuckles. "I never saw a more beautiful sight than you hanging out the window of a speeding truck, screaming my name." "You didn't answer." Slowly, carefully, he kissed my hand, claiming every inch of bare skin with a gentleness I didn't know he possessed. "I had a knife between my teeth." "I suppose that's a good excuse." I tipped my head back for another kiss. Alone for the first time since the chase, knowing he was safe, I felt overwhelmed with the need to have him close, to feel his body against mine. His smell, his taste, his heat, his desire--- I wanted them all. His lips met mine and I explored the depths of his mouth, tangling my tongue with his as I slid one hand under his shirt to feel his warmth and the firm, steady beat of his heart beneath my palm. When we broke apart to take a breath, I pressed a kiss to his throat, licking the saltiness from his skin. He backed away, one step, then two, leaving me bereft. "What's wrong?" "Chloe is in the truck." "She's a very heavy sleeper." I trailed my fingers over every hard ripple of his abdomen, following the soft trail that disappeared beneath his belt.”

“I suddenly became strangely inebriated. The external world became changed as in a dream. Objects appeared to gain in relief; they assumed unusual dimensions; and colors became more glowing. Even self-perception and the sense of time were changed. When the eyes were closed, colored pictures flashed past in a quickly changing kaleidoscope. After a few hours, the not unpleasant inebriation, which had been experienced whilst I was fully conscious, disappeared. What had caused this condition?”

“I suddenly began to think about time as the thing that unites an endless rosary of senseless events; and also about the fact that only in the sequence of these events is there meaning; and that it's not God, not love, not beauty, not the greatness of intellect that determines this world, but only time -- the flow of time and the glimmering of human life within it. Human life is its sustenance. Time consumes everything living by the ton, like a gigantic blue whale consumes microscopic plankton, milling and chewing it into a homogenous mass, so that one life disappears without a trace, giving another, the next life, a chance. Yet it wasn't the disappearance that grieved me the most, but the tracelessness of it. I thought to myself: I've already got one foot there, out in complete forgottenness.”

“I suddenly dreamt that I picked up the revolver and aimed it straight at my heart my heart, and not my head; and I had determined beforehand to fire at my head, at my right temple. After aiming at my chest I waited a second or two, and suddenly my candle , my table, and the wall in front of me began moving and heaving. I made haste to pull the trigger.”

“I suddenly felt that it was all the same to me whether the world existed or whether there had never been anything at all: I began to feel with all my being that there was nothing existing. At first I fancied that many things had existed in the past, but afterwards I guessed that there never had been anything in the past either, but that it had only seemed so for some reason. Little by little I guessed that there would be nothing in the future either. Then I left off being angry with people and almost ceased to notice them. Indeed this showed itself even in the pettiest trifles: I used, for instance, to knock against people in the street. And not so much from being lost in thought: what had I to think about? I had almost given up thinking by that time; nothing mattered to me. If at least I had solved my problems! Oh, I had not settled one of them, and how many there were! But I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.”

“I suddenly felt the way Cinderella might have felt if she hadn’t had that convenient midnight curfew: my feet were hurting, my hair was slipping free from its pins, and my makeup was getting all smudged from sweat. I was unbelievably tired, undeniably depressed, and I just wanted charming.”

“I suddenly felt, well, terribly old as I watched a mudskipper hopping along with what now seemed to me like a wonderful sense of hopeless, boundless naïve optimism. I hoped that if its descendant was sitting here on this beach in 350 million years' time with a camera around its neck, it would feel that the journey had been worth it. I hoped that it might have a clearer understanding of itself in relation to the world it lived in. I hoped that it wouldn't be reduced to turning other creatures into horror circus shows in order to try and ensure them their survival. I hoped that if someone tried to feed the remote descendant of a goat to the remote descendant of a dragon for the sake of a little more than a shudder of entertainment, that it would feel it was wrong. I hoped it wouldn't be too chicken to say so.”

“I suddenly knew that religion, God - something beyond everyday life - was there to be found, provided one is really willing. And I saw that though what I felt in the church was only imagination, it was a step on the way; because imagination itself can be a kind of willingness - a pretense that things are real, due to one's longing for them. It struck me that this was somehow tied up with what the Vicar said about religion being an extension of art - and then I had a glimpse of how religion can really cure you of sorrow; somehow make use of it, turn it to beauty, just as art can make sad things beautiful. I found myself saying: 'Sacrifice is the secret - you have to sacrifice things for art and it's the same with religion; and then the sacrifice turns out to be a gain.' Then I got confused and I couldn't hold on to what I meant - until Miss Blossom remarked: 'Nonsense, duckie - it's prefectly simple. You lose yourself in something beyond yourself and it's a lovely rest.' I saw that, all right. Then I thought: 'But that's how Miss Marcy cured her sorrow, too - only she lost herself in other people instead of in religion.' Which way of life was best - hers or the Vicar's? I decided that he loves God and merely likes the villagers, whereas she loves the villagers and merely likes God - and then I suddenly wondered if I could combine both ways, love God and my neighbor equally. Was I really willing to?”

“I suddenly realized I was in the humiliating predicament of being a smaller boy who was having money taken from him by a bully. This was wholly unexpected. Reading about such situations, I would smile superciliously and think that nothing of that kind could ever happen to me, because I would immediately fight back. It is, after all, better to take a beating once than to be humiliated repeatedly. Unfortunately, I had never read that such a relationship might begin with a con, a seemingly amicable request. For the next six months this boy (Crane was his nickname) poisoned my existence. I had to avoid him, otherwise every meeting turned into an excruciating dialogue with poking and threats. I was desperate and didn't know what to do. In my class I was the biggest and strongest, but Crane was taller and older and brazen and self-assured, which is, of course, the most important asset in the art of street confrontation. I had no older brother I could turn to, not even an older pupil I was friendly with. Complaining to my parents would shame me; besides, I already knew the advice they would give. "Well, just give him a good punch and he'll back off." It is all very well for adults to advise you to throw a punch. All bullying seems to them mere childish nonsense, although its emotional and psychological intensity is a hundred times greater than any problems they might be facing.... "What's that there, is your lip swollen? Let me see," he said, pretending to be in a conciliatory mood. At that I did the most daring thing in my life. Nowadays I get asked in nearly every interview where I get my courage. I genuinely believe my work in the past twenty years has not called for bravery; it is more a matter of having made a conscious choice. It certainly does not require even 1 percent of the courage I needed at that moment. I am sure it is a feeling familiar to many people: from sheer rage, desperation, and, paradoxically, above all, fear, you gain the courage to take the most resolute and reckless action. Yelling at him every swear word I knew, I punched him in the face several times as hard as I could, landing about half the blows. Completely taken by surprise, he fell over and looked up at me in bewilderment, lying on his back and half covering himself with his hands, evidently expecting me to start kicking him. I looked down no less bewildered. The fit of rage had passed, the adrenaline was draining away, and with every millisecond I came closer to the famous predicament of Schrodinger's cat: Crane might now get up and I would be dead or not. At that moment I leaned a rule in life: it is easier to perform a bold action than to live with its consequences. I ran away as fast as I could and looked back: Crane was running after me. After a couple of minutes I had a stitch in my side, but I ignored it, aware that if I stopped, everything would be much worse. I got away, but the next three days or so were scary, I feared getting beaten up at school in front of my friends or, even worse, in front of girls. To my great surprise, though, when I came face-to-face several times with my nemesis at school, he just glared at me menacingly. This gradually mutated into his very deliberately seeming not to notice me, while I, similarly, did not seem to notice him. I am still not sure why he didn't try to take revenge. Perhaps the answer is to be found in economic theory: A free agent wanders through the market taking money from younger pupils, each of whom is intimidated. By my outburst of insanity, I raised the price of harassment in my torturer's eyes and he made the rational decision to move on to others who were less psychotic. So I was, you might say, saved by the invisible hand of the market...The second possible explanation is that I wisely did not blab about the incident, sharing it only with a couple of close friends. Crane realized I was not trying to sabotage his reputation as bully in chief...”

“I suddenly realized that I was in the center of my world, and my emotions were at the center of me. They were the basis of my identity. Emotions had been my center point, the lens through which my reality was dispersed and regulated. The desire for pleasure, satisfaction, approval, and recognition had ruled my life.”