Quotes from Tom Spanbauer

The gods know what's important, what's wrong about you. They know everything. If you go out searching for the Holy Grail, they won't let you find it.

To admit ignorance is the highest knowledge. It is the necessary condition for all learning.

Life is a mess, Rose said. You can fix the mess human beings make, Rose said, But you can't fix the mess being human is.

Maybe you've had skin next to your skin, but when was the last time you let yourself be touched?

We're all just in our bodies for a moment in our life. Such a brave and lovely act it is to let the body celebrate.

Why else do we live, except to be loved and remembered by those we love?

God made man because he loves to hear stories, Alessandro said. That's a good story, huh?

Felt good, though, just being what I was.

LA is the me city, Ruby said, and New York is the you city. In LA it's fuck me . In New York it's fuck you .

All daring and courage, I said, All iron endurance of misfortune, make for a finer, nobler type of manhood.

With tybo men there isn't much difference between fucking and killing.

Things start where you don't know and end up where you know. When you know is when you ask, How did this start?

That's when you stop being one way and start being another, Ruby said. Not something many people can do, or want to do. In fact, Ruby said, The only people who cross over, cross over because they're on some kind of Mission Impossible. I could no longer live and stay the way I was, I said.

They're from France, Ruby said, Vogue magazine. They only speak French except for fuck you.

So put your costume on, honey! Ruby said. Set Harlequin free! That party monster of yours is screaming to come out. Let the monster out!

Every time you hear a car alarm, Ruby said, another New Yorker has gone to hell.

At our table in the corner by the window, huddled around a flame in a red glass, all of us, body to body to body to body. The touch that proves you're not alone, that someone else is there.

There's hundreds of corners on this island, Crystal said. And there are thousands of us. Exiles from the heartland without a heart. Out of the old country, a brand-new tribe, dancing to new tunes around a bucket of fire in a vacant lot.

The fates lead her who will; who won't they drag.

Things start where you don't know and end up where you know. When you know is when you ask, How did this start?

The Shy Hunter is terrified that others will destroy the truth within his heart, Rose said, And so the Shy Hunter armours himself ... thus armoured, he watches and waits and studies the world meticulously, hunting the world for prey ... Prey not in the sense of devouring or murder, Rose said, But prey in the sense of hunting for sore truths within another human heart.

So I'm smoking in the house, Mother said. And Bobbie's got a dog in her room. And your son Will's got an Injun in his. So there it is, Mother said. Like it or lump it!

A ghost in this place. That's what I am. Or I'm real and Manhattan is a dream.

Strange when that part in you is touched how quickly you can fall apart. It's as if the words that are being said go to the deepest place, the place in you that's become the way you've become so you can keep on going. The helmet you put on when you were a kid that grew into your head and now someone is saying you have a helmet on your head.