Hope could be a wonderful thing. But hope could crush you anew every single day. Hope could be the cruelest thing in the world.“Before we go forward, we have to look back."She looks really happy."
"Everyone looks happy on Facebook."
"I know, right? What's up with that?"Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon!You've made plenty of short stories long. But never, ever, have you made a long story short.Promise Me1
We get mad at someone for cutting us off in traffic or for taking too long to order at Starbucks or for not responding exactly as we see fit, and we have no idea that behind their facade, they may be dealing with some industrial-strength shit. Their lives may be in pieces. They may be in the midst of incalculable tragedy and turmoil, and they may be hanging on to their sanity by a thread. But we don't care. We don't see. We just keep pushing.Memories, you see, hurt. The good ones most of all.Summer romances come to an end. That was part of the deal. They are built like certain plants or insects, not able to survive more than one season. I thought we would be different. We were, I guess, but not in the way I thought. I truly believed that we would never let each other go. The young are so dumb.That's the problem with falling in love. It makes you start talking like a bad country song.Six Years1
Things can always be said later, but things can never be unheard.They say you never know how someone will react when the grenade is thrown.But life changes people. It smothers that kind of larger-than-life woman. Time quiets them down. That firecracker girl you knew in high school - where is she now? It didn't happen to men as much. Those boys often grew up to be masters of the universe. The super successful girls? They seemed to die of slow societal suffocation.Death is so close, always, a breath away, so perhaps it was wise to introduce children to that concept at an early age."Semper paratus." "It's Latin," Shane said. "It means 'Always ready'."Family and money is never a good mix. Someone is always going to feel resentful.Doctors kept stressing that mental disease was the same as physical disease. Telling someone who was clinically depressed, for example, to shake it off and get out of the house was tantamount to telling a man with two broken legs to sprint across the room. That was all well and good in theory, but in practice, the stigma continued. Maybe, to be more charitable, it was because you could hide a mental disease.All around her, children and families played and laughed and reveled in the glory of this seemingly ordinary day. They did so without fear or care because they didn't get it. They all played and they all laughed and they felt so damn safe. They didn't see how fragile it all was.It was obvious and a bit of cliché, but we don't really age in a straight line. We age in a circle, curving back to childhood, but in all the wrong ways.Here is the truth about tragedy: it's good for the soul.Sex is for anyone; the aftermath is for lovers.I kept hearing that "better to have loved and lost" bullshit. Another falsehood. Trust me, it is not better. Don't show me paradise and then burn it down.A beating hurts for a little while. The shame of cowardice never leaves.Love your parents - while we are busy growing up, they are growing old.Perception is often more important than reality.You look like several large orangutans made you their love slave.Some people, no matter how easy the path they are given on the walk of life, will find a way to mess it all up. Ray Levine was one of those people.You want people lined up, Will. You want the good guys on one side, the bad on the other. It doesn't work that way, does it? It is never that simple. Love, for example, leads to hate. I think that was what started it all. Primitive love.And bad stays. Bad doesn't go away. You bury bad, it digs itself out. You throw bad in the middle of the ocean, it comes back at you like a tidal wave.Those who believe that we are anything other than animals are blind. All humans are savages. The ones who are well fed are just lazier. They don't need to kill to get their food. So they dress up and find so-called loftier pursuits that make them believe that they are somehow above it all. Such nonsense. Savages are just hungrier. That was all. You do horrible things to survive. Anyone who believes that they are above that is delusional.Survival is the thing. The mind will twist to survive. Anything can become normal.I ordered a cheeseburger and a beer from a waitress who looked as though she wanted to be in one of those want-to-get-away? commercials. She called me hon. I love when a waitress calls me hon.The first sip of beer on a hot day is like that first finger-dip when you open a new jar of peanut butter.You don't worry about happiness and fulfilment when you're starving."Terrific," Simon said. "The psychos are on my side."Most religious people don't believe the dogma, Ash. We take from it what we want, we discard what we don't. We form whatever narrative we like - kind God, vengeful God, active God, laid-back God, whatever. We just make sure we get something out of it. Maybe we get life everlasting while people we resent burn for eternity. Maybe we get something more concrete - money, a job, friends. You just change the narrative.There are virtually no major life decisions you make that are not in some way based on your finances.Some people are drawn to trouble. Some people, no matter how easy the path they are given on the walk of life, will find a way to mess it all up.I said everyone looks happy. That was kinda my point. If you judge the world by Facebook, you wonder why so many people take Prozac.A voice flat enough to fit under a door crack.She dabbed her eye. A sarcastic rejoinder came to my lips, but I bit it back.Hope is cruel. Hope reminds me of what almost was. Hope makes the physical ache return.Six Years
Kids don't do what their parents say - they do what they see their parents do. So who was to blame here?Sure, on a larger scale, it was healthy to have people out there you cared about more than yourself. She knew that. But then there was the abject fear you would lose it. They say possessions own you. Not so. Loved ones own you. You are forever held hostage once you care so much.Most were conspiracy nuts, the kind who think Elvis and Jimi Hendrix are jamming on some island off Fiji.This was a place where tattoos outnumbered teeth.Part of the human condition is that we all think that we are uniquely complex while everyone else is somewhat simpler to read. That is not true, of course. We all have our own dreams and hopes and wants and lust and heartaches. We all have our own brand of crazy.Six Years
You live among this ridiculous wealth and you get lost. You worry about nonsense like spirituality and inner health and satisfaction and relationships. You have no idea what it is like to starve, to watch yourself turn to bones.Am Ende war die hässlichste Wahrheit immer noch besser als die schönste aller Lügen.The ugliest truth, in the end, was still better than the prettiest of lies.
The world doesn't give even the slightest damn about us or our petty problems.Trust is like that. You can break it for a good reason. But it still remains broken.He didn't believe in karma, but then again there was no reason to poke karma in the ribs.Feeding teenage boys was like filling a bathtub with a grapefruit spoon.Years fly by, but the heart stays in the same place.Promise Me
The cardinal rule: You never have to take back words you don't say.The hunchback sees the hump of others - never his own.We humans can't see straight. We are always biased. We always protect our own interests.Yvonne started humming the QuickGo jingle, one of those torturous tunes that enters through the ear canal and proceeds to ricochet around the skull in search of an escape route it will never find.Ein Roman ist wie eine Wurst. Sie mag dir gut schmecken, aber du willst nicht wissen, wie sie gemacht wurde.A novel is like a sausage. You might like the final taste but you don't want to see how it was made.
Being a parent is not for the faint of heart. I may joke about knowing fear, but the fact is, the first time I ever knew real fear was the day Charlotte, my first child, was born. Suddenly there is someone in the world you care about more than anything.
New Jersey hat zwei Seiten - schreckliche Städte und wunderschöne Vororte. Ich lebe in einem Vorort, dem letzten Schlachtfeld des amerikanischen Traums, wo die Menschen heiraten, Kinder bekommen und versuchen, ein glückliches Leben zu führen.The state of New Jersey is really two places - terrible cities and wonderful suburbs. I live in the suburbs, the final battleground of the American dream, where people get married and have kids and try to scratch out a happy life for themselves. It's very romantic in that way, but a bit naive. I like to play with that in my work.
This is the price you pay for having a great father. You get the wonder, the joy, the tender moments - and you get the tears at the end, too.
I'd never had money growing up, and it's never been that important to me, except maybe to take our kids on a nice vacation or something like that.
