Quotes About Reflection

Then winter ended and spring came, and I thought, even if I don't believe there's a poem in anything anymore, maybe I'll write a story. A lot of people do that when they can't seem to figure out who or what they love. It might be an oversimplification, but they seem to write poetry when they do know.

NICOLE CULLEN Long Tom Lookout

The album's called A to B, right?" Bosco said. "And that's the question I want to hit straight on: how did I go from being a rock star to being a fat fuck no one cares about? Let's not pretend it didn't happen.

You call them friends, Hannah," Mom lashes out, confronting me from the doorway with hands on hips. "But your connection to them is situational. Years from now you'll look back and marvel at what you could have seen in most of these people." "You're probably right," I say, because Mom's predictions have turned out to be right a surprising number of times. "But in three weeks, when the party is, they'll still be our friends.

Anna liked Bascombe, which was partly to say that she liked herself in his company.

In fact the whole apartment, which six years ago had seemed like a way station to some better place, had ended up solidifying around Sasha, gathering mass and weight, until she felt both mired in it and lucky to have it—as if she not only couldn't move on but didn't want to.

Sometimes, before coming inside, Eddie would stand in the hall and overhear a festive gaiety from behind the closed door. It always surprised him. Did I imagine that? he would ask himself later. Or had they been easier—happier—without him?

The secret to a happy ending, Mom used to tell us, is knowing when to walk away.

The fish are gaudy, easy targets, nibbling at coral. Lou has speared seven by the time he realizes Rolph hasn't killed a single one.

Sasha was adjusting her yellow eye shadow in the mirror when she noticed a bag on the floor beside the sink that must have belonged to the woman whose peeing she could faintly hear through the vaultlike door of a toilet stall.

It's a pity we're forced to make the choices that govern the whole of our lives when we're so goddamn young." "If they're the wrong choices, then we have to make new ones," Dexter said. "Even late in the day.

It's all still there: the pool with its blue and yellow tiles from Portugal, water laughing softly down a black stone wall. The house is the same, except quiet. The quiet makes no sense. Nerve gas? Overdoses? Mass arrests? I wonder as we follow a maid through a curve of carpeted rooms, the pool blinking at us past every window. What else could have stopped the unstoppable parties? But it's nothing like that. Twenty years have passed.

Even smiling, there's no hope for Marty's face. But I'm worried he might think the same of me, so I don't smile back.

By now it was afternoon. Ted began to walk, still dazed, until he found himself among a skein of backstreets so narrow they felt dark. He passed churches blistered with grime, moldering palazzi whose squalid interiors leaked sounds of wailing cats and children. Soiled, forgotten coats of arms were carved above their massive doorways, and these unsettled Ted: such universal, defining symbols made meaningless by nothing more than time." (p. 212)

Silence after a roaring motor is a sound of its own.

Structural Dissatisfaction: Returning to circumstances that once pleased you, having experienced a more thrilling or opulent way of life, and finding that you can no longer tolerate them. But

If you ever find yourself thinking that a mass human extinction event would be good for population control, you might want to get checked out.

History is retroactive math

Being observed felt like an action, the only one worth taking.

It began the usual way, in the bathroom of the Lassimo Hotel.

He replayed the moment--an old disquieting conundrum that clouded whatever new thought had been trying to form. Abruptly, he was exhausted, as if he'd been walking for days--as if he'd wandered too far from his own life to reenter it.

Experience leaves a mark, regardless of the reasons and principles behind it.

Structural Dissatisfaction: Returning to circumstances that once pleased you, having experienced a more thrilling or opulent way of life, and finding that you can no longer tolerate them.

I don't know what happened to me," he said, shaking his head. "I honestly don't." Bennie glanced at him, a middle-aged man with chaotic silver hair and thoughtful eyes. "You grew up, Alex," he said, "just like the rest of us.