He knew how to handle pain. You had to lie down with pain, not draw back away from it. You let yourself sort of move around the outside edge of pain like with cold water until you finally got up your nerve to take yourself in hand. Then you took a de...
At the time of Lewis and Clark, setting the prairies on fire was a well-known signal that meant, ‘Come down to the water.’ It was an extravagant gesture, but we can’t do less. If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant g...
But Alonso kept smiling that smile and nothing made any sense with that smile looking you in the face. 'Jim, don't tell me that, you know, brother-shit. I have been through it all. Take, you know, advice. There is only one thing and that is the kick,...
People are wrong when they think that an unemployed man only worries about losing his wages; on the contrary, an illiterate man, with the work habit in his bones, needs work even more than he needs money. An educated man can put up with enforced idle...
Randal Graves: [after Dante finds out the boss is in Vermont] Jesus, that seems to be the late motif in your life - ever backing down. Dante Hicks: I don't back down. Randal Graves: You *always* back down! You come in on your day off, you assume resp...
Piscano's Brother-in-Law: You gotta lay down the law, otherwise they're gonna make a fool out of you. Artie Piscano: They're not gonna make a fool out of me. I write it all down in this book. Every fucking nickel, it goes down right here. Receipts, b...
Jordan Belfort: [on getting arrested] I'm sober for two years, stopped my drugs, settled down with my wife and kids, and then this happens! Rugrat gets busted down in Miami, and guess who happens to be with him? Saurel! That's right, out of all the S...
If I lived through the next day or so, I needed to start keeping track of where these jokers liked to get their bloodthirsty freak on. It might give me an edge someday. Or at least a list of places that could use a nice burning down. I hadn't burned ...
When you speak, your words echo only across the room or down the hall. but when you write, your words echo down the ages.
One way of seeing all this was as a symptom of postmillennial decay, the degradation of public discourse, and the encroachment of celebrity worship into the arena of national affairs. Another way of looking at it was as an indication of the GOP's sta...
Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.
The shifting sands of the world... show how much the surrealists were drawn towards an interrogation of what reality actually is. Unlike fabulists of whatever hue, there is a materiality in surrealist writing that resolutely keeps it, one might say, ...
I started down but Sam caught my arm and knelt down himself to look. "For crying out loud," he said. "It's a racoon." "Poor thing," I said. "It could be a rabid baby-killer," Cole told me primly. "Shut up," Sam said pleasantly.
They were playing old Bob Dylan, more than perfect for narrow Village streets close to Christmas and the snow whirling down in big feathery flakes, the kind of winter where you want to be walking down a city street with your arm around a girl like on...
Those acidic insults being poured down on you are found in satan's gallons! Watch those who tackle you for you to fall down; watch them closely. They are wearing the booths Satan invented! Don't attack the people; attack the one who sponsors them!
Your relationship may be "Breaking Up," but you won't be "Breaking Down." If anything your correcting a mistake that was hurting four people, you and the person your with, not to mention the two people who you were destined to meet.
'Stand By Me' was really great for me and my buddies; we'd all watch that together because that was us - we were down in the creek and hanging out every day and going on little adventures. I had about sixteen friends who are all about the same age as...
He wanted to roar like a lion on a cement floor. And bellow like a polar bear with yellow fur worn down to pink skin against the tiles of an enclosure in a zoo. The disgust must come. Let it drip down the walls. Scorch the ceiling black with hatred. ...
For the first time I realize how perilous peace can be. I appreciate the tightrope that my grandfather has spent his whole life trying to walk. And now, more than ever, I grow terrified that I'm going to make us all fall down.
I envy these people. Wide-open suffering, their messes all hanging out. Lives boiled down to raw need--a near-holiness to it. And all of us driving our cars up and down the mountain--we'll go on forever trying to fool each other.
I kiss [her] even though I know that if you kiss a girl before you are married to her you might get AIDS.