Quotes from Steve Tesich

Life, it seems, is not meaningless but, rather, so full of meaning that its meaning must be constantly murdered for the sake of cohesion and comprehension. For the sake of the storyline.

No birth certificate is issued when friendship is born. There is nothing tangible. There is just a feeling that your life is different and that your capacity to love and care has miraculously been enlarged with out any effort on your part. It's like having a tiny apartment and somebody moves in with you. But instead of becoming cramped and crowded, the space expands, and you discover rooms you never knew you had until your friend moved in with you.

Life, it seems, is not meaningless but, rather, so full of meaning that its meaning must be constantly murdered for the sake of cohesion and comprehension. For the sake of the storyline.

The closest I had ever come to seeing human nakedness before was in a movie. A documentary. It showed hundreds and hundreds of naked Jews, men, women, and children, being escorted by armed Nazi guards and barking German shepherds to their deaths. All the Jews were naked. Not undressed. Naked. And it seemed to me then, while I watched that documentary, that it wasn't just the Jews that the Nazis wanted annihilated but the very concept of nakedness as well.

There only remained the problem of the terrible ache in his lower back. Holding on with both hands to the top of the door frame, he bent his knees to an almost full squatting position, trying to stretch the pain away. Hanging from the car door frame seemed to have no effect on his back pain, but it did cause a sudden and completely unexpected loosening of his bowels. Before he could tighten his sphincter muscle,

He was neither asleep nor awake, neither this nor that. It was some new state that he was in, some new kind of nonexistence.

Every year it's gonna to be a new one, and every year it's never gonna be me. I'm just gonna me Mike. Twenty-year old Mike. Thirty-year old Mike. Old mean old man Mike.

He's never tired. He's never miserable. When I was young, I was tired and miserable.

Everybody cheats. I just didn't know.

No birth certificate is issued when friendship is born. There is nothing tangible. There is just a feeling that your life is different and that your capacity to love and care has miraculously been enlarged with out any effort on your part. It's like having a tiny apartment and somebody moves in with you. But instead of becoming cramped and crowded, the space expands, and you discover rooms you never knew you had until your friend moved in with you.