The Contortionist's Handbook Quotes
"Those five pills stopped my heart and I saw the brain seizure tunnel of light before the EMTs shocked me back alive."
"That four-second blast of relief is what Vicodin feels like for six hours."
"I lay on my back, a lance of orange twilight stabbing me square in the face through a slice of curtain where the gaffer's tape had come loose."
"My name is Daniel Fletcher. I was born November 6, 1961."
"Apple juice holds a mnemonic effect for me like the smell of isopropanol holds for a child awaiting a vaccination."
"I'm not going through the whole process if the risk isn't necessary."
"I'm thorough. It's why I've never been caught."
"Jail scares me. Involuntary electro-convulsive therapy scares me more."
"The most important detail to remember here is frequency, frequency, frequency."
"Your appearance, demeanor and responses either fit into the check boxes or they don't."
"I love her, and it should scare me—the ease with which I can say that, but it doesn't."
"You either end up in the custody of the state, or you don't."
"Nothing scares a young shrink like summing up a patient just a little unhappy right now."
"I've seen them. Hiding crow's feet or just hiding."
"If I can't read your eyes, I can't trust you."
"My red hair and blue eyes narrow my options."
"It rapid-fire replays my every trauma center wakeup and close call waltz with a straitjacket."
"I was in there until after the pharmacy closed."
"I miss Keara. I can close my eyes and see her."
"And if you were a patient and a good-looking woman, then you were as good as in Hell."
"I hated the book, could hardly understand the language but kept at it to please Dad."
"My left hand is a Rorschach blotch all its own."
"I learned to fast for four days then wear clothes a size too large."
"My defiance wasn't going to call their bluff because they weren't bluffing."
"After a time, I learned to be invisible, learned not to fight because that makes you visible and you do not want to be visible in jail."
"I fought because no other kid ever would or ever did hit me harder or longer than Dad."
"I'd never done it before, but changing the birth date on her driver's license was easy, so I started working on others, from scratch in the print shop after school."
"Being somebody else, only in name, was like wearing a mask at a party—I could do anything and nobody would know it was me."
"I learned that predators don't intentionally choose the weak or old or sick. They kill what they can."
"A person's life story is equal to what they have plus what they want most in the world, minus what they're actually willing to sacrifice for it."
"Sometimes I can be so smart, and sometimes I can be so stupid."
"I didn't want to think of something else to slow me down."
"Try some?" She held the vial to me, brown glass the size of my pinkie tip.
"I knew if she took too long, he was probably dead of asphyxiation and she was sneaking out the back door by the phone booths."
"Imagine stopping the film in a split moment, then running it backwards."
"That's what it feels like. The perpetual whirlwind of vaporous memories and regrets goes away."
"Didn't you ever want to join the circus when you were little?" she asked me, laughing at my amazement.
"I wanted to be a contortionist." In one second it seemed funny and in the next second I forgot why.
"Some people wonder how others go on the run, leave one place for another when they're being tracked, watched, and they slip away anyhow."
"I spent five months with Sudden, through August of 1985."
"Do you know what day of the week it is, Martin?"
"Yesterday was payday, so that made it Thursday."
"I clocked wedding rings and accents and scars, felt for calluses when I shook hands."
"I lit nobody's cigarette, paid no compliments."
"I remembered, between the dead coke rush and the dull glow of the bourbon, that this is why I hate crowds."
"Guys who want to kick your ass don't know the look in the eyes of somebody who knows how to seriously hurt you."
"I dragged her by the wrist out to Beverly Boulevard, to her car."
"Natalie and I let our contrast speak for itself, watched nanosecond conclusions silently congeal behind eyes at cocktail parties."
"I remembered every single second of those first three headaches."
"The godsplitters have been returning ever since."
"I enjoy a certain feeling of new freedom after each change, each time I crawl out of that small airless box and breathe again."
"Yes, I'm paranoid. But I'm a walking assemblage of federal offenses, outstanding bench warrants, and psychiatric referrals."
"I'm not scared of being caught. I'm scared of being caught twice."
"I subscribe to magazines, rent videos, and check out library books to correspond to fictitious interests."
"All because I made an exception for Jimmy, so I could rationalize the exception I made for Keara."
"My paranoia is greater than the sum of its parts and, because of that, I am free to come and go."
"I've cultivated some bad habits, but trust isn't one of them."
"I've had a lifetime of practice doing the same thing. Don't know if I've got it right, but I want to because it means she's okay."
"My name is John," and I think I'm going to suffocate because it's so funny. "I'm in the phone book."