Lunar Park Quotes
"You do an awfully good impression of yourself."
"ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank."
"Specks—specks all over the third panel, see?—no, that one—the second one up from the floor."
"It was an indictment not only of a way of life I was familiar with but also—I thought rather grandly—of the Reagan eighties and, more indirectly, of Western civilization in the present moment."
"My father made the bulk of his money from highly speculative real estate deals."
"The freedom this money bought made him increasingly unstable."
"The world lacked coherence, and that within this chaos people were doomed to failure."
"I watched with a mixture of fear and fascination—laced with excitement—its transformation from a student assignment into a glossy hardcover."
"I had won the lottery yet still felt poor and needy."
"The book was short and an easy read (you could consume this ‘piece of black candy’—New York Magazine—in a couple of hours)."
"The fact that I was only twenty-one and there were no other voices yet seemed not to matter."
"And I was taken seriously. I was a joke. I was avant-garde. I was a traditionalist. I was underrated. I was overrated."
"Writing the book had been an extremely disturbing experience."
"I realized, only then, that I was in serious trouble."
"Cities were no place to raise a family, or, more pointedly according to Jayne, start one."
"Jayne wanted to raise gifted, disciplined children, driven to succeed."
"I had expected to be bored, and to be angered by that boredom, but it never materialized."
"I felt I had time to redeem myself. But not on Halloween."
"Everything was different: the rhythm of the days, your social status, suspicions about people."
"I was thrust into the role of husband and father—of protector—and my doubts were mountainous."
"I found myself changing and had no choice but to feel that this conversion validated me."
"I felt a tear on my face. I was happy, I realized with amazement."
"But by the end of that summer everything I had learned started to disappear."
"Everything collapsed in a time frame made up of twelve days."
"Regardless of how horrible the events described here might seem, there’s one thing you must remember as you hold this book in your hands: all of it really happened, every word is true."
"Well, being married’s okay—but the dad thing’s a little tougher."
"This is my unconscious, Dr. Kim. These just may be legitimate concerns."
"It’s been really hard fitting into this whole world."
"All I ever wanted was a TV and a lock on my door."
"The universe floating below the star-studded ceiling."
"You should be grateful for all the things you have."
"The night was drenched with darkness and the darkness really was dazzling."
"Everything was in the past and would stay there."
"A writer’s physical life is basically one of stasis, where the untruths flowed onto the whiteness of a blank screen—into the part of me that was tactile and alive."
"The polite conversation that carried over from cocktails into dinner was so stifling that it carried a certain ruthlessness."
"They wanted something back, they wanted a return on their investment—this need was almost religious."
"Everything I wanted to tell them I witnessed would just serve as the potential catalyst for pushing me out of the house."
"I realized the entire layout of the house was exactly the same as the house I grew up in."
"But in that chair on that deck I thought: Get out of Midland County, grow a goatee, smoke cigarettes again, seduce women half your age."
"Because 307 Elsinore Lane was haunted, and this was the only alternative I could come up with."
"I had dreamed of something so different from what reality was now offering up, but that dream had been a blind man’s vision."
"You learn to move on without the people you love."
"Because I’m not gonna let anything happen to you."
"It’s just a game, Dad. It’s just a stupid game."
"I want us to be a family but you never acted like you wanted it."
"Everything changed when you came into the house."
"I’m sorry for not being there for you and your mom and your sister, and I don’t know how to make it up to you."
"None of us really knew each other because we were not a family yet."
"The past was being erased, and a new beginning was replacing it."
"There was a new language being taught to us."
"Neither Robby nor I mentioned the scene that had played out in the car at Buckley to anyone, but it seemed as if they knew because the people in the house were happier."
"The conversation was soothing and Marta knew where to direct it."
"Everything previous to this was part of the dream."
"A new wind swept around the house, which felt so much emptier without Jayne in it."
"Demons are malicious and powerful. Ghosts are just confused—lost, vulnerable."
"Ghosts draw their energy from any number of sources: light, fear, sadness, anguish—these are the things that make the spirit precedent."
"Because the house may not be the source of the haunting."
"You are its focus. Because we need to find out what the source of the haunting is."
"Because of the heat I’ve had intense dreams the last four nights about vivisection and I’m doing nothing now, vegetating in my office."
"The room turned sharply at that moment, and yes, my idea about the world changed."
"I was so over this world that it made no impact on me."
"Every answer is a threat, a new abyss that only sleep can close."
"You will be remembered, you were the one I needed, I loved you in my dreams."
"I wasn’t hungry—and I took my tray and sat at a table by the window."
"The sea reached to the land’s edge where a family, in silhouette, stood watching us until the fog concealed them."
"Tell him I say hello, be good, that I am thinking of him and that I know he’s watching over me somewhere."
"He can always find me here, whenever he wants, right here, my arms held out and waiting, in the pages, behind the covers, at the end of Lunar Park."