Better Living Through Plastic Explosives - Pg 54 : Floating Like a Goat

  There was a time when I would gladly have sold my soul to curry favour with a particular curatorial demagogue, but I can tell you with certain authority that even back then I would never have stooped to impose strictures on others. A free-spirited woman does not make girls and boys form separate lines before they can enter the classroom, she does not restrict conversation during snack time, and she most certainly does not insist that when six-year-old children draw people or animals their feet MUST be touching the ground. 

Better Living Through Plastic Explosives - Pg 53 : Floating Like a Goat

  Don't let that horse                                  eat that violin             cried Chagall's mother
                                              But he                       kept right on                                   painting
And became famous

   -LAWRENCE   FERLINGHETTI, A CONEY ISLAND OF THE MIND

Better Living Through Plastic Explosives - Pg 39 : Once, We Were Swedes

  Alex heard herself shrieking. The sound of the big ginger tom next door happening upon a raccoon clan in the back alley. Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween. A B-movie screech in Dolby Digital 5.1. On the wall behind the child doctor was a calendar featuring anthropomorphized bacteria engaged in Winter Olympic-style sporting events with an assortment of antibiotic soaps. 

Better Living Through Plastic Explosives - Pg 38 : Once, We Were Swedes

  These are the things we do when we're no longer ourselves. When the self disappears. The self--dear Knob-Goblin, I'd almost forgotten about her. 
  

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Better Living Through Plastic Explosives - Pg 36 : Once, We Were Swedes

  And there was Alex with her free-floating sense of hollowness in her own rib cage. 

Better Living Through Plastic Explosives - Pg 35 : Once, We Were Swedes

  All around the city children were abandoned to aging relatives or the newly minted private kiddie kennels by their thrill-seeking parents. The older children banded together, moving nomad-like from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, performing odd pantomimes for spare change. How can we have children? We are children! the parents laughed as they formed their human pyramids or checked their supply of water-purification tablets needed to survive their third-world spirit quests. 

Better Living Through Plastic Explosives - Pg 31 : Once, We Were Swedes

 When had they stopped talking IKEA? When she inherited that Ethan Allen-style credenza from her mother last summer, her first real piece of furniture, while Rufus had slapped together shelves made of plastic milk crates and two-by-fours in the basement to hold his growing new/old collection of vinyl from stores like Zulu and Red Cat? Places where middle-aged men in black concert T-shirts shot the shit with concave-chested kids who had rogue chin hairs and opinions about everything from whether Muse frontman Matt Bellamy was really the late Jeff Buckley with plastic surgery to the latest conspiracy theory about the government monitoring all Internet use in collusion with an online ad conglomerate. 

Better Living Through Plastic Explosives - Pg 2 : Summer of the Flesh Eater

  This isn't about Kim. You could say this is about evolution. You could say we've developed a deep personal appreciation for Darwin, the man and the theorist--his dyspeptic stomach, his human frailties, his ability to cling to contradictory desires. We've weighed anchor aboard the Beagle, if only in our dreams, charted our own Galapagos of the soul and found it wanting. 

SHARP OBJECTS - GILLIAN FLYNN

Sharp Objects - Pg 173

  I couldn't decide if I'd been mistreated. By Richard, by those boys who took my virginity, by anyone. I was never really on my side in any argument. I liked the Old Testament spitefulness of the phrase got what she deserved. Sometimes women do. 

Sharp Objects - Pg 167

  I could hear that sound: a crayon running in hard lines across a paper. Dark scribbles with the crayon pushed so hard it ripped the paper. She looked up at me, breathing hard and shallow.   "I'm tired of dying."

Sharp Objects - Pg 161

  I rested my chin on my hands and wondered if I really wanted to talk business. He had a scar just above his right eyebrow and tiny dimple in his chin. 

Sharp Objects - Pg 160

  People got such a charge from seeing their names in print. Proof of existence. I could picture a squabble of ghosts ripping through piles of newspapers. Pointing at a name on the page. See, there I am. I told you I lived. I told you I was. 

Sharp Objects - Pg 156

  "You could have been a model, you know?" she said suddenly.  "I doubt that," I snapped. Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes. 

Sharp Objects - Pg 152

  I felt a spear of admiration for the girl. When I'd been sad, I hurt myself. Amma hurt other people. When I'd wanted attention, I'd submitted myself to boys: Do what you want; just like me. Amma's sexual offerings seemed a form of aggression. Long skinny legs and slim wrists and high, babied voice, all aimed like a gun. Do what I want; I might like you.

Sharp Objects - Pg 144

  These men were never very interesting to me; they had no edges, and they were usually cowards. They instinctively fled any situation that might cause them embarrassment or awkwardness. But Richard didn't bore me. Maybe because his grin was a little crooked. Or because he made his living dealing in ugly things. 

Sharp Objects - Pg 144

  "Do you have a girlfriend? I bet you have two. A blonde and brunette, to coordinate with your ties."  "Wrong on all counts. No girlfriend, and my last one was a redhead. She didn't match anything I owned. Had to go. Nice girl, too bad."

Sharp Objects - Pg 142

  Richard wanted me to take him to all the town's secret places, the nooks that only locals know about. Places where people meet to screw or smoke dope, where teens drink, or folks go to sit by themselves and decide where their lives had unraveled. 

Sharp Objects - Pg 127

  I believed the boy. He cried in public and told silly stories about his sister and played with his girlfriend's hair and I believed him. 

Sharp Objects - Pg 115

  "So, are you guys dating or what? I heard little Camille here is a real hot ticket. At least she was."  Richard let out a burp of a laugh, a shocked croak. Unworthy flared up my leg.

Sharp Objects - Pg 113

  "It gets dark early, I like that."  "Why?"  Because that means the day has ended. I like checking days off a calendar--151 days crossed and nothing truly horrible has happened. 152 and the world isn't ruined. 153 and I haven't destroyed anyone. 154 and no one really hates me. Sometimes I think I won't ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand. 

Sharp Objects - Pg 110

  "I have a guy in my office--sensitive. When I got passed over for a promotion, he suggested I sue for discrimination. I wasn't discriminated against, I was a mediocre reporter. And sometimes drunk women aren't raped; they just make stupid choices."

Sharp Objects - Pg 106

  He saved the hooves of all the deer he killed, always had the latest pair in his pocket, and would pull them out and tap drumbeats with them on whatever hard surface was available. I always felt like it was the dead deer's Morse code, a delayed mayday from tomorrow's venison. 

Sharp Objects - Pg 96

  I remember finally meeting her mom, how she zipped around our suite asking so many questions, knowing already so much about me. She gave Alison a big plastic bag of safety pins that she thought might come in handy, and when they left for lunch, I surprised myself by bursting into tears. The gesture--so random and kind--baffled me. Is this what mothers did, wonder if you might need safety pins? 

Sharp Objects - Pg 95

  I'm here. I don't usually feel that I am. I feel like a warm gust of wind could exhale my way and I'd be disappeared forever, not even a sliver of fingernail left behind. On some days, I find this thought calming; on others it chills me. 

Sharp Objects - Pg 95

  Once I was standing on a cold corner in Chicago waiting for the light to change when a blind man came clicking up. What are the cross streets here, he asked, and when I didn't reply he turned toward me and said, Is anybody there?   I'm here, I said, and it felt shockingly comforting, those words. When I'm panicked, I say them aloud to myself. I'm here.

Sharp Objects - Pg 91

  "It's just that she was a real person, you know? You think: Nine years old, what's that? What's there? But Ann had a personality. I could guess what she'd think about things. I knew, when we were watching TV, what stuff she'd think was funny and what stuff she'd think was dumb. I can't do that with my other kids. Hell, I can't do that with my wife. And you just felt her there." 

Sharp Objects - Pg 90

  "Ann was my mouth," Betsy said quietly. Then she said no more.  "How is that, Mrs. Nash?"  "She was a real talker, said whatever come into her mind. In a good way. Mostly." She was silent again for a few beats, but I could see her thinking back behind her eyes so I said nothing. "You know, I thought maybe she'd be a lawyer or college debater or something someday, because she was just... she never stopped to measure her words. Like me. I think everything I say is stupid. Ann thought everyone should hear everything she had to say."

Sharp Objects - Pg 80

  "So, Cubby, any theories on whether it's a local?"  Curry seemed to like the nickname for me, his favorite cub reporter. His voice always tickled when he used it, as if the word itself was blushing. 

Sharp Objects - Pg 61

  I was ten and writing every other word my teacher said on my jeans in blue ballpoint. I washed them, guiltily, secretly, in my bathroom sink with baby shampoo. The words smudged and blurred, left indigo hieroglyphics up and down the pant legs, as if a tiny ink-stained bird had hopped across them. 

Sharp Objects - Pg 60

  My body was heading into a flare. I paced a bit, tried to remember how to breathe right, how to calm my skin. But it blared at me. Sometimes my scars have a mind of their own.

Sharp Objects - Pg 56

  "If you want me to leave, I will."  I didn't, in truth. He was nice to look at, and his voice made me feel less ragged. 

Sharp Objects - Pg 41

  I drank more vodka. There was nothing I wanted to do more than be unconscious again, wrapped in black, gone away. I was raw. I felt swollen with potential tears, like a water balloon filled to burst. Begging for a pin prick. Wind Gap was unhealthy for me. This home was unhealthy for me. 

Sharp Objects - Pg 34

  I know the wisdom, that no parents should see their child die, that such and event is like nature spun backward. But it's the only way to truly keep your child. Kids grow up, they forge more potent allegiances. They find a spouse or a lover. They will not be buried with you. The Keenes, however, will remain the purest form of family. Underground. 

Sharp Objects - Pg 32

  The procession moved past us. The coffin seemed ludicrously small. I pictured Natalie inside and could see her legs again--downy hair, knobby knees, the Band-Aid. I ached once, hard, like a period typed at the end of a sentence. 

Sharp Objects - Pg 31

  The organ pipes exhaled the muffled tones of "Be Not Afraid," and Natalie Keene's family, until then crying, and hugging and fussing near the door like one massive failing heart, filed tightly together. 

Sharp Objects - Pg 23

  When I was a child, I always walked the stairs up, ran the driveway down. I assumed the rail was on the left side going up because I'm left-handed, and someone thought I might like that. 

Sharp Objects - Pg 14

  The gentleman hunter with visions of Teddy Roosevelt and big game, who retires from a day in the field with a crisp gin and tonic, is not the hunter I grew up with. The boys I knew, who began young, were blood hunters. They sought that fatal jerk of a shot-spun animal, fleeing silky as water one second, then cracked to one side by their bullet. 

Sharp Objects - Pg 5

  On the table by the door sat a photo of a preteen me holding Marian at about age seven. We're both laughing. She has her eyes wide open in surprise, I have mine scrunched shut. I'm squeezing her into me, her short skinny legs dangling over my knees. I can't remember the occasion or what we were laughing about. Over the years it's become a pleasant mystery. I think I like not knowing. 

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE - J.D. SALINGER

The Catcher in the Rye - Pg 204

  That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say "Fuck you." I'm positive, in fact. 

The Catcher in the Rye - Pg 202

  I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another "Fuck you" on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn't come off. It's hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible. 

The Catcher in the Rye - Pg 198

  I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody'd think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone. They'd let me put gas and oil in their stupid cars, and they'd pay me a salary and all for it, and I'd build me a little cabin somewhere with the dough I made and live there for the rest of my life. I'd build it right near the woods, but not right in them, because I'd want it to be sunny as hell all the time. I'd cook all my own food, and later on, if I wanted to get married or something, I'd meet this beautiful girl that was also a deaf-mute and we'd get married. She'd come and live in my cabin with me, and if she wanted to say anything to me, she'd have to write it on a goddam piece of paper, like everybody else. If we had any children, we'd hide them somewhere. We could buy them a lot of books and teach them how to read and write by ourselves. 

The Catcher in the Rye - Pg 188

  "I think that one of these days," he said, "you're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there. But immediately. You can't afford to lose a minute. Not you."

The Catcher in the Rye - Pg 184

  What I mean is, lots of time you don't know what interest you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most. I mean you can't help it sometimes. 

The Catcher in the Rye - Pg 171

  "You can't even think of one thing."  "Yes, I can. Yes, I can."  "Well, do it, then."  "I like Allie," I said. "And I like doing what I'm doing right now. Sitting here with you, and talking, and thinking about stuff, and--"  "Allie's dead--You always say that! If somebody's dead and everything, and in Heaven, then it isn't really--"  "I know he's dead! Don't you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can't I? Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake--especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all."

The Catcher in the Rye - Pg 121

  The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times... Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way--I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it. 

The Catcher in the Rye - Pg 120

  Nobody gave too much of a damn about old Columbus, but you always had a lot of candy and gum and stuff with you, and the inside of that auditorium had such a nice smell. It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn't, and you were in the only nice, dry, cosy place in the world. I loved that damn museum. 

The Catcher in the Rye - Pg 115

  The kid was swell. he was walking in the street, instead of on the sidewalk, but right next to the curb. he was making out like he was walking a very straight line, the way kids do, and the whole time he kept singing and humming. I got up closer so I could hear what he was singing. he was singing that song, "If a body catch a body coming through the rye." He had a pretty little voice, too. He was just singing for the hell of it, you could tell. The cars zoomed by, brakes screeched all over the place, his parents paid no attention to him, and he kept on walking next to the curb and singing "If a body catch a body coming through the rye." It made me feel better. It made me feel not so depressed any more. 

The Catcher in the Rye - Pg 81

  New York's terrible when somebody laughs on the street very late at night. You can hear it for miles. It makes you feel so lonesome and depressed. 

The Catcher in the Rye - Pg 73

  She knocked me out. I mean it. I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, eve if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. 

The Catcher in the Rye - Pg 71

  "I said do you know when a girl's really a terrific dancer?"  "Uh-uh."  "Well--where I have my hand on your back. If I think there isn't anything underneath my hand--no can, no legs, no feet, no anything--then the girl's really a terrific dancer.  She wasn't listening, though. So I ignored her for a while. We just danced. God, could that dopey girl dance. 

The Catcher in the Rye - Pg 62

   In my mind, I'm probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw. Sometimes I can think of very crumby stuff I wouldn't mind doing if the opportunity came up. I can even see how it might be quite a lot of fun, in a crumby way, and if you were both sort of drunk and all, to get a girl and squirt water or something all over each other's face. The thing is, though, I don't like the idea. It stinks, if you analyze it. I think if you don't really like a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all, and if you do life her, then you're supposed to like her face, and if you like her face, you ought to be careful about doing crumby stuff to it, like squirting water all over it.

The Catcher in the Rye - Pg 54

   She stuck the bag right out in the middle of the aisle, where the conductor and everybody could trip over it. She had these orchids on, like she'd just been to a big party or something. She was around forty or forty0five, I guess, but she was very good-looking. Women kill me. They really do. I don't mean I'm oversexed or anything like that--although I am quite sexy. I just like them, I mean. They're always leaving their goddam bags out in the middle of the aisle. 

The Catcher in the Rye - Pg 52

  When I was all set to go, when I had my bags and all, I stood for a while next to the stairs and took a last look down the goddam corridor. I was sort of crying. I don't know why. I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my goddam voice, "Sleep tight, ya morons!"

The Catcher in the Rye - Pg 39

  I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it. I even tried to break all the windows on the station wagon we had that summer, but my hand was already broken and everything by that time, and I couldn't do it. It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it, and you didn't know Allie. 

The Catcher in the Rye - Pg 29

  "I'm the goddam Governor's son," I said. I was knocking myself out. Tap-dancing all over the place. "De doesn't want me to be a tap dancer. He wants me to go to Oxford. But it's in my blood, tap-dancing."