“The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as long swallows.” – Stephen King, ‘On Writing’
Apologies to my parents for the frank weed discussion to begin the blog, but. When I was in Brooklyn this summer visiting my good friend and past Lazy & Entitled Podcast guest Julian Williams, the painter, he offered me a joint. It was a joint made of little bits of all of the weed he’d smoked that year. Maybe like a mid-year review of weed? I guess drippings from the grinder, I’m not sure, I have a general policy of trying not to say no to Julian. One of his friends tried to warn me off it. Whatever, man, I felt great that night. I wasn’t drinking.
Anyway, sometime after that, I thought, “I should do that, but for quotes I like in books I’m reading.”
So yeah, I started collecting quotes around May or June of this year. Some quotes are older, just sitting around on my Notes app. Some I would use as epigraphs—none of those are below. I don’t think, anyway. Novels might be over-represented—I think if I wrote down every single line of poetry that made my heart explode, I’d be stopping so much that I never finished a collection. Anyway. The idea is that I’ll do this every year, but maybe it turns into like a twice a year thing, depending on how long this thing goes. Speaking of length! Without further ado, here are better writers:
“The waiter whipped out a handkerchief and removed the feather. And that too was a horror: what have we lost when you can’t shake off your own jacket or wash a single dish, when comfort is your only concern. What are we willing to ignore, or let atrophy, for the right to indolence. What a monstrous thing, comfort.” – Yuri Herrera, ‘Season Of The Swamp’
“This is something to learn from: civilization without capitalism and how it can work.” – Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Anarcho-Indigensim: Conversations On Land And Freedom
“Lewis’ mother / Says we’re snobs and we only think about poetry / It’s true / There’s something about America that’s unthinkable” – Bernadette Mayer, ‘Midwinter Day’
“My least favorite part of the day is from 2:34 to 4:56 in the afternoon.” – Percival Everett, ‘Dr. No’
“We’re gonna stay in Chicago, just so you know. Don’t be scared.” – Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., ‘Pour One For The Devil’
“As soon as they left the river and entered the bayou, the landscape grew denser, twitchier, closer, as if the trees had bent over to give them a sniff.” – Yuri Herrera, ‘Season Of The Swamp’
“The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what was a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?” – Jeff VanderMeer, ‘Annihilation’
“March 9 / Does numb have a sound?” – Mayda Del Valle, “Chronology Of Sound”
“I would like to sing the praises of frogs…Ancient beings here of this place, maligned in European fables of frogs and princes; I love them.” – Winona LaDuke, ‘To Be A Water Protector’
“how brash, the wind” – Elise Paschen, “Heritage”
“This is the place where the Earth is born. The farthest and most remote set of islands in the world is a magical land.” – Winona LaDuke, ‘To Be A Water Protector’
“Always talking about books and painting and music and all. It was funny, the way he’d go on about that stuff; probably thought he was the only one who cared about it.” – Theodore C Van Alst, Jr., ‘The El’
“Men I have traveled with through time, the women, even the girl-women, have been continents I inhabited. To break up, to split with a woman, is to be sent into exile.” – LJ Pemberton, ‘Still Alive’
“…other cities where he’d been in exile—Seville, Gibraltar, New York—all of them rich, but none like this, where you could so clearly see the blood on the gold.” – Yuri Herrera, ‘Season Of The Swamp’
“Native Hawaiian traditional knowledge of realms above and below led to their success in navigating the largest body of water in the world…the people know the Mauna is a sacred living being. That knowledge is not held by those who seek to colonize land and space.” – Winona LaDuke, ‘To Be A Water Protector’
“Jimmy asked me the usual question did you get any pussy / no I got forgiveness for my sins” – Frank Stanford, ‘The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You’
“Thieves, injuries, fatalities. But who remembered any of that when you could breathe again.” – Yuri Herrera, ‘Season Of The Swamp’
“I had never talked to the frogs; I despised anthropomorphizing animals” – Jeff VanderMeer, ‘Annihilation’
“No one heard us and no one saw us, everyone in the neighborhood at work or lying on the couch watching TV, unable or incapable of giving a shit.” – Theodore C. Van Alst Jr, ‘The El’
“That’s how the madness of the outside world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality.” – Jeff VanderMeer, ‘ANNIHILATION’
“It is difficult to tell what blanks my mind might be filling in just to remove the weight of so many unknowns.” – Jeff VanderMeer, ‘ANNIHILATION’
“Hands. Hands with no person…They could convince themselves that what they were doing wasn’t being done to a person if they called them hands.” – Yuri Herrera, ‘Season Of The Swamp’
“Imagine…that language is only part of a method of communication. Imagine it isn’t even the most important part but more like the pipeline, the highway. A conduit only.” – Jeff VanderMeer, ‘Authority’
“There’s a regret in you…the expeditions are never told that people had lived here, worked here, got drunk here, and played music here. People who lived in mobile homes and bungalows and lighthouses. Better not to think of people living here, of it being empty…and yet now you want someone to remember, to understand what was lost…” – Jeff VanderMeer, ‘Acceptance’
“There was in the smell of his sweat and the brine of the water, the sudden tangy smell, almost a flavor, a sense of honest effort. The tautness of her triceps, her forearms as she put her back into it. The pleasing soreness that came after, letting her know this was effort, this was real.” – Jeff VanderMeer, ‘Acceptance’
“Numbness? A sense of having gone through so many crises that emotion must be hoarded, that it might not run out.” – Jeff VanderMeer, “Acceptance”
”Why be afraid of what you could not prevent?” – Jeff VanderMeer, ‘Acceptance’
“What history do I belong to? I don’t know where my skin comes from. / But I know the color it bruises.” – Teo Shannon, “Last Phone Call with Grandpa Ruben”
“The best thing on this earth is a woman / God sends us men when we want other satisfaction.” – Chase Berggrun, ‘RED’
“In Colombia, any gathering of more than six people, regardless of class or the hour, is doomed to turn into a dance” – Gabriel García Márquez, ‘News Of A Kidnapping’
“He was at a loss for words and remembered violence” – Chase Berggrun, ‘RED’
“…it was inconceivable that one of the largest transnational enterprises in the world did not have enough compassion to provide humane conditions for its kidnappers and their victims.” – Gabriel García Márquez, ‘News Of A Kidnapping’
“He’d wasted his entire life. Such people were very dear to those of us who’d wasted only a few years.” – Denis Johnson, “Out On Bail”
“Who should be pouring drinks there but some young woman whose name I don’t remember.” – Denis Johnson, “Work”
“The world! These days it’s all been erased and they’ve rolled it up like a scroll and put it away somewhere. Yes, I can touch it with my fingers. But where is it?” – Denis Johnson, “Work”
“I had two doubles and immediately it was as if I’d been dead forever, and was now finally awake.” – Denis Johnson, “Happy Hour”
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“While they were eating they followed the unbreakable Antioquian custom of discussing nothing but the food.” – Gabriel García Márquez, ‘News Of A Kidnapping’
“Then only the demons inhabiting us could be seen. Souls who had wronged each other were brought together here.” – Denis Johnson, “Happy Hour”
“And what are you going to do to me now? With what, exactly, would you expect to frighten me?” – Denis Johnson, “Happy Hour”
“Talk into my bullet hole. Tell me I’m fine.” – Denis Johnson, “Steady Hands At Seattle General”
“I ask were you shocked / My coroner was a woman / Or that her skirt / Was so tiny / What does this say about society / Is it flawed / It is flawed” – Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi, “i like to get naked”
“Send me up like wedding rice my maidens I will be soothed” – Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi, “send me up my maidens”
“You know what movie I like / Bambi / Especially the scene / Where the Hunter ate bambi’s mother / I mean they did not show the feast / I thought it was implied / She was delish / And ok this does not / Have to turn into a review / But why did we not see / More of the hunter’s journey / I am not into deer and bunny crap” – Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi, “my weakness is for violence and violation”
“Men have two fears / The first is crashing your hang glider / Into the center of the ocean at 1 am / And having to swim around naked for hours / Until a shark hears you splashing / The other fear is living forever” – Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi, “sleep story”
“The key to transcendence was never to receive / It was always to give / Pursuing the thing that transforms us / Holy fuck a moly all this wisdom / I don’t want you ever to fear” – Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi, “years of drinking blood and nipping at the cud of flowers”
“You made the horrific commitment to strangle / I imagine it was for the feeling??” – Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi, “i don’t think normal things”
“They say the flavor of victory / Is red and succulent / Somewhat like a costco hot dog.” – Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi, “upon his bed of oak”
“He put it like this: ‘I want to be a Bond villain.’ Simple.” – Percival Everett, ‘Dr. No’
“To experience the power of nothing would be to understand everything; to harness the power of nothing would be to negate this, and the sad, scary, crucial idea here is that this might well be a distinction without a difference.” – Percival Everett, ‘Dr. No’
“It was a mathematician’s response. Of course she was correct, but the answer was useless.” – Percival Everett, ‘Dr. No’
“Eigen was dressed in a red bikini, looking like a mathematician in a bikini.” – Percival Everett, ‘Dr. No’
“What kind of muscle are you two? You let a mathematician kick your asses?” – Percival Everett, ‘Dr. No’
“I felt hollow. I felt grief. I was too slow. I couldn’t recognize nothing until it was too late.” – Percival Everett, ‘Dr. No’
“I work very hard and I wish I could say I have nothing to show for it.” – Percival Everett, ‘Dr. No’
“Easy money, a narcotic more harmful than the ill-named ‘heroic drugs,’ had been injected into the culture.” – Gabriel García Márquez, ‘News Of A Kidnapping’
“Seditious thought: there would be nothing too terrible about dying out here, about becoming part of all of this.” – Jeff VanderMeer, ‘Authority’
“We all laughed as we heard the white boys hightail it out of there.” – Percival Everett, ‘James’
“Bro, you ain’t the only one who picks up the newspaper, knows where the library is, likes the big humbug in Beowulf, moving out on Grendel and whatnot, or fighting orcs and shit.” – Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr., ‘The El’
That’s it! I hope this was a fun reading experience.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris