Quotes About Contrast

Death is simple. Life is messy. Give me life, the more complicated the better.

Don't confuse symmetry with balance.

Reality whistles a different tune underwater.

I may be mad, he thought, but I prefer the shit of this world to whatever sweet ambrosias the next may offer.

Champagne was discovered by a Catholic monk, said Bernard. Took one swallow and burst out of his cellar yelling, 'I'm drinking stars, I'm drinking stars!' Tequila was invented by a bunch of brooding Indians. Into human sacrifice and pyramids. Somewhere between champagne and tequila is the secret history of Mexico, just as somewhere between beef jerky and Hostess Twinkies is the secret history of America. Or aren't you in the mood for epigrams?

Consider the silent repose of the sausage as compared to the aggressiveness of bacon.

The ugly may be beautiful, the pretty never.

He was as nervous as a praying mantis at an atheists' picnic...

A sausage is an image of rest, peace and tranquility in stark contrast to the destruction and chaos of everyday life.

There have been cans of dog food more splendiferous than South Richmond. Land mines more tender.

Enlightened and endarkened. The ultimate.

It was laughter that might have been squeezed from the tubes of his own darkest heart, then amplified fifty times through the bellows of a loon's ass.

Just as the overturned bucket that was once brimming seems so much emptier than the bucket that never held milk in the first place. Thanks for filling my little pail.

She was even grateful at first for this backdoor entry into the New York art scene, although rather quickly she came to think of it as entering a peacock through its rectum.

She felt like a black candle at a wake for a snake.

It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too. Fire and brimstone all right, but hidden in lacy groves.

A dead hydrangea is as intricate and lovely as one in bloom. Bleak sky is as seductive as sunshine, miniature orange trees without blossom or fruit are not defective; they are that.

Violet learned then what she had forgotten until this moment: that laughter is serious. More complicated, more serious than tears.

She talked like that. But I understood what she meant. About having another you inside that isn't anything like you. Dorcas and I used to make up love scenes and describe them to each other. It was fun and a little smutty. Something about it bothered me, though. Not the loving stuff, but the picture I had of myself when I did it. Nothing like me. I say myself as somebody I'd seen in a picture show or a magazine. Then it would work. If I pictured myself the way I am it seemed wrong.

It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too.

Reverend Father is the only kind man I ever see. When I arrive here I believe it is the place he warns against. The freezing in hell that comes before the everlasting fire where sinners bubble and singe forever. But the ice comes first, he says. And when I see knives of it hanging from the houses and trees and feel the white air burn my face I am certain the fire is coming.

and suddenly there was Sweet Home rolling, rolling, rolling out before her eyes, and although there was not a leaf on that farm that did not make her want to scream, it rolled itself out before her in shameless beauty. It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too

The day breeze blew her dress dry; the night wind wrinkled it.

My mother danced all night and Roberta's was sick.