The Topeka School Quotes
"Unthinkingly, he lifted her white sweater and smelled the woodsmoke from earlier that evening at Clinton Lake, the synthetic lavender of what he knew to be her shower gel."
"He hoped Amber had dived into the water before his rambling confession of feeling."
"See the outboard motor gleaming in the moonlight."
"Without taking the keys or her clothes or pipe or bottle, he sprinted up the incline through the wet grass toward her house."
"But the prospect of encountering anyone now—when he hadn’t even confirmed that she was present—horrified him."
"I think he’s depressed, like he should have a therapist, see your parents at the Foundation."
"He asked her some questions about her dad and she answered them."
"He knew these shapes from his concussion as a child and from his migraines."
"He felt like a timer had started somewhere, that he had minutes, maybe only seconds, to flee the house."
"He walked and walked, ashamed to be on foot; he could not find his car, her house."
"He would be looking at a page of text or a sign on a wall and suddenly find it impossible to read, letters like twigs floating away on water."
"He tried to imagine what it would be like to be hospitalized here, to live on the campus."
"He saw more than one highly ranked team had misjudged its judges and been eliminated in early rounds for speaking drivel."
"Intelligent people would not want to destroy those hard-won accomplishments in technology or medicine."
"The calmer his dad remained, the more furious Adam grew: fights over nothing would lead him to slam doors; twice he punched holes in his bedroom wall."
"A red-haired woman in cat-eye glasses pointing out a detail on a Greek funerary relief said something to her friend that sounded like a recording played in reverse."
"I felt fucked up about the deception—at least, when I wasn’t exhilarated about Jane."
"A year of nights spent staring at the ceiling, Rachel asleep beside me, the plaster yellow in the streetlight, the cracks seeming to spread before my eyes."
"The opposite of a truth is a falsehood; but the opposite of a profound truth may be another profound truth."
"Human history, like the history of the individual, can be understood as a slow passage through conflicts of a sexual-aggressive nature."
"One might say this marinara sauce came from a jar; but did not the jar, in a deep, perhaps deeper, sense, receive its identity from the sauce?"
"If Adam is okay, I promise to do X, promise to do Y."
"I kept seeing Lassiters out of the corner of my eye, kept catching glimpses of his rose painting, whispers out of time."
"Life is pain, that is true, profoundly so; so, too, that life is joy; the more profound the statement, the more reversible."
"Darren can you help me with this filled him with pride."
"The metal of the light beer in Darren’s mouth."
"He was good at debate, but he was great at extemporaneous speaking."
"Darren in that garage, in his chair, last century, his happiness."
"They were viciously punishing Darren for what he represented, the bad surplus."
"The man-child represented a farcical form of freedom."
"But that’s not really right; no one decided, no one was in charge."
"The opposite might also be true: that they were viciously punishing Darren."
"Could he learn their speech and customs? Only almost."
"But Jason was central; he’d helped guide Darren to the Jeep at Cody’s."
"The baby boomers were more liberal than their parents."
"He was great at extemporaneous speaking, the freestyle of nerds."
"He was always practicing something like freestyling in his head."
"The film is in slow motion, but only to emphasize the speed."
"The only remaining source of illumination is a rotating mirrored ball."
"The persistence of the mind of childhood—its plenitude and purposelessness."
"America was one vast institution; it had no outside."
"We could go wherever we wanted, but we could never penetrate the image our power projected."
"The actual event, which took place at the end of my first school year, was hazy even at the time."
"The guilt was a surprise, the intensity of it, the impulse to confess."
"Maybe it had to do with a million things, including just a brute and basic appetite that interpretation obscures as much as it clarifies."
"The change took place soon after Jane’s book was published, on the Foundation campus."
"It’s clear you’ve been a policy debater, so you know that arguments about what constitutes a voting issue are often contested."
"I preferred it to Rolling Hills: the inevitable unfortunate smells were subtle."
"Through a fake stethoscope, you can still hear a real pulse; through her fake doctoring, Sonia provided some real comforts."
"That plaques and tangles form in your brain and all that’s left, if you’re lucky, are the traces of your training."
"It wasn’t obvious what voices got in you, were implanted; it didn’t follow a hierarchy of intimacy; it wasn’t under your control."
"How do you rid yourself of a voice, keep it from becoming part of yours?"
"If you take this mysterious pill you can abstract from the absurdity and offensiveness of their vocabulary to regain a sense of wonder."
"The trauma was perpetual when you were left in it alone."
"Do you see how you’ve hurt their feelings? I said, looking toward the bad father on his bench, the bad father who no doubt saw what was happening."
"But even the voices that felt most firmly lodged within him made no sound."
"Why couldn’t we just go one fucking night without blurring the distinctions, crossing the wires."