A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius Quotes
"I prefer the dark part of the night, after midnight and before four-thirty, when it’s more bare, more hollow. Then I can breathe, and can think while others are sleeping, in a way can stop time."
"Alcoholism and death make you omnivorous, amoral, desperate."
"I like the scaffolding as much as I like the building. Especially if that scaffolding is beautiful, in its way."
"We debate about how old the grandmother of a man in his late sixties must be. It seems almost impossible that she’s still breathing."
"Always she had to be told of her context, what brought her here, the origins and parameters of her current situation."
"My mother read a horror novel every night. She had read every one in the library."
"It's endlessly renewable, usable without diminishing one's capacity to create more."
"She is a vase, a doll. A giant vase. A giant fruit. A prize-winning vegetable."
""Hi, sweetie," Mom says, craning her head back, looking up at him."
""I didn’t even know his name for a long time," Les said, shaking his shoulders into his coat. "Always ‘the caboose.’""
""Yeah, I didn’t even know his name for a long time," Les said, shaking his shoulders into his coat. "Always ‘the caboose.’""
"That’s worse than the last thing you had on."
"We’re always late. Why the hell can’t you get dressed yourself?"
"We are the bright new stars born of a screaming black hole."
"I mean, Jesus Christ, Toph, give me a goddamn break every once in a while, please?"
"I have no nerve. But he does not know that yet."
"They will be so sorry. Their tiny heads will implode with guilt and remorse."
"I am yelling, thrilled, high! 'Ha ha you fuckers! I got you! I got you motherfuckers!'"
"It's a beautiful car, clean, the black vinyl bright, perfect."
"I'm not hurt. I think about whether or not I'm hurt. I'm not."
"I love the car. A shotgun hangs at eye level in front of us."
"Motherfuckers. Stupid motherfuckers steal my dad's fucking wallet."
"The clouds above are fat, moving slowly over the gray bridge like manatee ghosts."
"My father has slipped further down the well."
"How can that work, a life summed up in—so I was sitting there, and as Bill was talking, I was staring at Father Mike, our priest."
"I could stand here and grouse about how she’ll never see my children, about how unfair it all was, her being taken a month after my father."
"We sat there, day and night, trading places, Beth and I, with Toph downstairs usually, Beth and I sitting, watching, holding her hot hand, sleeping there, sometimes draped over her."
"I have nothing but my friends and what’s left of my little family."
"I am both a) martyred moralizer and b) amoral omnivore born of the suburban vacuum + idleness + television + Catholicism + alcoholism + violence."
"I am rootless, ripped from all foundations, an orphan raising an orphan and wanting to take away everything there is and replace it with stuff I’ve made."
"I promise I will be good. I will be sad and hopeful. I will be the conduit. I will be the beating heart."
"We didn’t bother with the casket, considering it would be empty and all."
"We will continue, against the odds, with only these simple tools, these small hands. We’ll make this thing run on nothing. On fumes, if need be. On our own fumes."
"Your hat smells like urine. You’re only saying that because I’m black."
"It’s about having a vision. It’s been frustrating for me lately as an actor. The most important thing I’ve learned is that the past can be a block to the future."
"Early issues ofMightof MightofMight, for example, listed ads in the table of contents, and included deadpan corrections like 'On page 111, in our ‘Religious News Round-up,’ we reported that Jesus Christ was a deranged, filthy proto-hippy. In fact, Jesus Christ was the son of God. We regret the error.'"
"Everyone around the ill must do what they can, in terms of sacrifice and struggle, or malnourishment or sleep deprivation, to suffer too, and to stay close while suffering."
"No! Mar-gin! For! Err-or! Listen, you know this, we know this, we’ve always known this, that the only way we can do this is with a certain amount of efficiency."
"It’s fun to wonder about the kinds of things that will happen in the future. Who will do what? What will happen?"
"There is no margin for error! Everything is too tight, brother, everything is just right there, like that clenchingfistsclenching fistsclenchingfists, see that? Tight, taut jerkingfistsapart,mimingthetestingofaknotinashortpieceofropejerking fists apart, miming the testing of a knot in a short piece of ropejerkingfistsapart,mimingthetestingofaknotinashortpieceofrope! Everything is pulled taut!"
"The world is in bloom. She is back, we have not lost her, she’s obviously back, and hearing us, and will soon talk."
"The beach, the park. I need to take my clothes off. I can’t drive."
"But then came the backlash. They tore Adam to pieces."
"There’s no record of it anywhere in Southern California. Is that where it happened?"
"I want to be shot at, want to fall into a hole, want to be dragged from my car and beaten."
"How’s that magazine going? Probably not for long."
"I have to call you back in ten minutes. It’s freezing and gray and night in Chicago."
"I was worried about what the guy who killed me would think of me."
"The box is my mother, only smaller. The box is not my mother. Is the box my mother?"