Life

There were certain things, learned so young and remembered so deep that they felt like little stones in the center of her mind. These would be the parts of her that rotted last, the bits left over once the rest skittered off on the wind or was drunk deep by the roots.

A youth with his first cigar makes himself sick a youth with his first girl makes everybody sick.

The fact is I don't drive just to get from A to B. I enjoy feeling the car's reactions, becoming part of it.

You don’t have to wait for a storm to pass to paint your own rainbow.

You have not been placed on this earth to be the sole source of comfort for the black man's fragile ego. Page 221.

My sense of self has expanded and contracted like a schizophrenic accordion. I have questioned everything, and I have felt nothing. I have told the universe to f**k off, and I have fallen down weeping at its compassionate response.

A man’s spirit is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.

Judging from the unfamiliar number, I assumed the text came from Shannon. If not, I would see who came by my house at 4:30 and go with it. Maybe it would be Mr. Darcy coming to pick me up in an extravagant horse-drawn carriage, but I couldn’t picture Mr. Darcy using a cell phone.

Just as the universe is in constant flux, so too are we in constant change, and we must accept that.

Don't stand in traffic and complain about all the cars.

A splinter of pride got in under my breast-bone and lodged there.

But this gives no proper idea of my feelings at all; and no one that has not lived such a retired stationary life as mine, can possibly imagine what they were: hardly even if he has known what it is to awake some morning, and find himself in Port Nelson, in New Zealand, with a world of waters between himself and all that knew him.

He was a peculiar sight. Tears rolling down his face, shouting to drown the sound of the singing rabbit; he said he needed help, pointed to a chicken, handed over some money, grabbed his parcel and bolted out the door in panic.Boys, thought the butcher.Drugs, thought the woman.Justin Case, thought Dorothea.

In Shahid's view, the best way through difficult times, as through life in general, was just to go along with things. It was a rare problem that couldn't be solved by being ignored.

Hit me with spit on the wounds.

She did not date. She did not have time for men. Men were never, ever worth a great amount of energy. She was the kind of woman that looked down on what she called ‘settlers’, women who chose love and fleeting passion that turned to dull, lifeless marriages over a career and independence.

I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of catfish.

Music is a second language to my heart.

There's two of me. The person I carry around like a dead carcass inside of me and the one I show to others.

I was born with a mission and definite purpose and I must achieve my goal and fulfill my destiny on the planet earth.