“I entered the building unconvinced that a hot dog could be a breakfast dish in the way her sausage father was so famous for, and left gladly corrected — breakfast has more to do with how you feel than what you‘re eating, and the people and dogs of the 4 Way make me feel awake, full, and not to be fucked with.”
“If that‘s all a little opaque to you, you can always subscribe to the second theory, in which the cofounder of Costco threatens to kill his own CEO over hot dog prices.
[…]
“ “I came to Jim once and I said, ‘Jim, we can‘t sell this hot dog for a buck fifty. We are losing our rear ends,‘” he said. Sinegal, a billionaire, replied: ‘If you raise the effing hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out.‘”
“I‘m pretty sure I‘ve given him far more than his permitted ration of gummy fruit snacks, but he could sense weakness and I was left without much of a choice.”
As an aunt, I feel this in my bones 😭🤷🏻♀️😂😂
“There is *probably* a sum of money that could have incited me to sleep in that room. I am not wealthy and I can be bought. But it would be up in the thousands. I‘m easy, but not cheap.”
“I don‘t think many people ever realize that it‘s the half-second details that make us fall in love — one glance, one chuckle, a flick of the hair.”
“He mixes maple syrup and mayo on his plate. Dips his French fries in. Tonight, he dipped his finger. There‘s odd and then there‘s something else…a worse kind of odd. Like everything about him is mayonnaise and syrup.”
“He started therapy, which made him think he had to be on Zoloft, and Zoloft made him question if he had to be in therapy. He probably needed both but didn‘t trust either. He saw them as a pair of overlapping Band-AIDS and worried something terrible was festering beneath them.”
“At a certain point, anyone who can‘t control their illness has to wonder if they‘re terrible for everyone around them.”
“Security is never much more than an illusion, like a pristine mountainside right before an avalanche.”
“She could rearrange her workspace or decorate her home like disco night in Christmas Town, but the changes never moved from outside in.”
“The overhead lighting compensated for the evening darkness outside, keeping the room unnaturally, even depressingly, bright.”
“That‘s what happens when you‘re responsible for lives other than your own, isn‘t it? You do what you have to do.”
“To be a man means learning to ignore whatever causes trouble. That‘s the whole mystery.”
“All these matters absorbed his mind, drawing the world inside, into the large, chaotic space that each of us carries within like an invisible piece of luggage that we drag after us all our lives, without knowing why. Our true self.”
“But maybe he was just doing what he knows how to do to stay safe, how you‘re doing what you know how to do to stay safe. That‘s how most of us end up hurting people we care about without ever meaning to.”
“[…] everything we see is a fraction of what our eyes take in. Our brains make executive decisions about what we need to see, creating our reality for us.”
“While I enjoy nature, I‘m not a fan of metaphorical weather.”
“And I‘m sure my hair won‘t do well with all this humidity. But we just gotta show up and be ourselves. What‘s the worst that can happen?”
“She has no idea what he‘s saying. It‘s so loud, she can‘t hear a thing, but she doesn‘t care because when it‘s this loud and this late and you‘re this drunk, you‘re not supposed to be able to hear anything.”
“I‘m careful, which is how I know my problem is mild, if I even have a problem, which I maybe don‘t.”
“It was an odd sensation to be thinking of someone and have her unexpectedly appear. Like thoughts come to life. It must be fate, Virgil thought. He didn‘t know if he believed in fate, but it made sense.”
“He‘s superstitious, though, inclined to subscribe to the idea that coincidence does not exist, that when one encounters the unexpected or uncanny it‘s important to spend a few extra minutes considering the why.”
“[…] the last gardener had finally retired. Carl had only a small amount of experience with gardening, but he had a library card.”
🙌🏻🙌🏻
pickWow. At times disgusting, brutal, and ridiculously difficult to read. At times absolutely heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, and hopeful. Everything I‘ve come to expect from Eric LaRocca and more. Far exceeded my expectations. 10 out of 5 stars.
“There are so many different kinds of quiet, and only one word for them. The quiet in the house has matured from quiet as lack of noise to something else, a textured, grainy quiet, a thickness to stumble through.”
I can‘t believe there are no posts about this book on here?? I read this probably around 2008/09. I remember loving the book and it having such a strong impact on me at the time. Over the years this book continues to just pop into my mind at the most random times and I‘m hit with this wave of nostalgia and longing, but I‘m not sure for what. I want to reread it but don‘t want to risk breaking its ethereal hold over me. Or maybe it will only deepen
“There are people we come across during our lives who, after they drift out of our worlds, drift out for good. Even if we see them again, it‘s a quick, meaningless hi and how are you? There are other people, though, with whom things pick up right where the relationship left off, whenever we run into them. The level of comfort — it feels like no time has passed.”
“What I wanted to tell you is that there are lots of ways to love people and I know that you‘ll love someone else again. Even if it‘s not the same, some of it might be better.
“‘I don‘t want to,‘ I whispered. I wanted to love only you. And I couldn‘t imagine anything could be better than that.”
Jill Santopolo ripping my heart out over here 🥺😭💔
“There‘s something about death that makes people want to live.”
“You taught me to look for beauty. In darkness, in destruction, you always found light.
“I don‘t know what beauty I‘ll find here, what light. But I‘ll try. I‘ll do it for you. Because I know you would do it for me.”
“Once she hit thirty-five everyone started to look either like a child or like they had one foot in the grave.”
“There is nothing in the world more tragic than an undeserved hangover.”
“Unfortunately, those who are the most sensitive are sometimes also the most troubled.”
“I almost dropped her in the snow but I didn‘t because the fierceness with which we love gave me enough strength.”
“Fate can bring you together, but it can just as easily tear you apart.”
“And we‘re just dumb enough to have listened to her.
“Desperate […]. We‘re desperate. There‘s a big difference.”
“Yes, well, a bit of a headache. But I have a firm rule: no hangover of mine is going to stop me from doing what I planned to do. If hangovers broke my plans, I‘d become a hermit.”
“Today mama and me saw a lady who is a spycologist (sic) who asked why I wanted to die. I said I don‘t but it hurts to live.”
