A.S. King

“Some of you have it ingrained in you. You weren't born with it. No baby has hate for anything. We were all babies once, right? This little guy doesn't care what country you were born in or what religion you might practice or how much you weigh or who you might love.”

“How many things do I have to invent in my head to survive this?”

“I think back to the last thing Dave said to me and try to imagine what escaping oxygen would look like. It looks a lot like drowning.”

“I am equal to a baby and to a hundred year old lady. I am equal to an airline pilot and a car mechanic. I am equal to you. You are equal to me. It's that universal.Except that it's not.”

“She called it baggage. "You're scared to open your suitcases and see what your mother packed.”

“And really–I would rather suck truck fumes than deal with this sort of shit forever. Mom says that Nader is a loser who will grow up to be a loser and that I'll understand when I'm forty. But I want to understand now.”

“Always? I know this sounds totally stupid, but sometimes I really can't see the point in living if I will always have to deal with this crap. I know I will have better times in my life, and I might even make myself into someone important, but if the whole time I have to deal with assholes, then what's the point?”

“Is love something that will always be available? Will it always be confined and untrustworthy like it feels today? Is there enough to go around? Am I wasting mine on strangers?”

“I bring my hand to my face and pull away tiny pieces of the jagged scab. My face reflects in the rounded airplane window, and I see it is now a tiny Massachusetts, with Cape Cod curling toward my ear. In only a few more days it will be gone. I feel the fresh, smooth parts and marvel at how soft they are. New skin amazes me. New skin is a miracle. It is proof that we can heal.”

“People believe it because people are stupid. Apparently, that’s adequate now.”

“Don't judge. I'm not getting drunk. I'm coping.”

“New skin is a miracle. It's proof that we can heal.”

“I don’t have enough gross words in my gross vocabulary to describe how gross that gross thought is. Gross.”

“I want my life to be easier than this. I mean, I know I'm not some starving kid who has to wash clothes in the Ganges for a nickel, but today just sucks.”

“You know that saying about how you don’t know what you have until it’s gone? I already did know what I had, and now that she’s gone, I know even more.”

“I place us where we are a happy couple who are madly in love, and we are kissing the way people kiss on their wedding day. With joy and relief and love. Without guilt. Without Shame.”

“Look, this is a loan. I don't know if love is something I will run out of one day. I don't know if I should be giving it all to you guys or not. Today, I feel like maybe I should have kept some for myself for days when no one else loves me.”

“I think today is already sucky enough without splinters in my ass.”

“But it feels good to love a thing and not expect anything back. It feels good to not get an argument or any pushiness or any rumors or any bullshit. It's love without strings. It's ideal.”

“Hey - the whole freaking world was built from delusional optimism and folly. What makes you so special? We're all just making it up as we go along. No one really knows what they're doing. Anyone who tells you otherwise is talking out of their butt.”

“The willow is green; flowers are red. The flower is not red; nor is the willow green.”

“All those people who are chained here thinking that their reputations matter and this little shit matters are so freaking shortsighted. Dude, what matters is that you're happy. What matters is your future. What matters is that we get out of here in one piece. What matters is finding the truth of our own lives, not caring about what other people think is the truth of us.”

“Listen to me. They may control what you do, but no one can pee on your soul without your permission.”

“The simplest answer is to act.”

“Tell that guy to kiss my white vivacious ass. He never met me.”

“But I don't ask him anything, because he's driving with that weird fake-happy look on his face, as if he's about to chop me up into little pieces and feed me to a tiger.”

“--he stopped and eyed Bill Corso--"if you choose to just sit here like a bored jungle gorilla, you will have to write out this quote as many times as you can during the next hour.”

“Here's my using dickwad in a sentence. Greg is such a dickwad, he locks his car in the Pagoda Pizza parking lot. (No. That isn't a real Vocab word.)”

“It also makes my father right again. How will I ever soar with the eagles if I'm surrounded by turkeys?”

“The pastor is saying something about how Charlie was a free spirit. He was and he wasn't. He was free because on the inside he was tied up in knots. He lived hard because on the inside he was dying. Charlie made inner conflict look delicious.”

“I can’t stop myself from reaching for the bottle that’s under my seat. I’ve gone all night without a sip, but it’s not about being addicted. It’s about being told what to do my whole life and doing it and then losing everything anyway.”

“Maybe the adults around me were too cynical and old to do anything to help innocent people like Mrs. Kahn or Charlie, or the black kids who were called nigger at school, or the girls Tim Miller groped on the bus. Maybe they were numb enough to blame the system for things they were too lazy to change.”

“I never asked her how she was, because I didn't really think about how she was. I just thought about what she thought of me.”

“I want to tell her that the only thing you get from walling yourself in is empty.”

“That Sindy. She was so damn smart. But I never told her that. I also never told her that I loved her, or that I loved the two little stretch marks she got from carrying Vera. Or that I loved that freckle on her forehead. I never told her that I loved her lasagna or that I thought her views on politics were clever. I just kept my mouth shut because I thought that made me safe.”

“What Vera doesn’t know is: I’d kill to be a pickle on her Big Mac—ground to relish between her perfect white teeth.I’d kill to be a bug she squishes with her holey Army-issue combat boot.But she’s too good for me. She always was.”

“But I’m not just my genes, Dad.”

“Mom walked out on us, remember? Because she never got over her own baggage, not because of you or me, right?”

“Then, Valentine’s Day came. There was a dance, and balloons and flowers and cheaply made rings and all sorts of lame teddy bears and stuffed animals, as if teenagers can be wooed with the same shit as five-year-olds. It was the Dietzes’ most hated holiday of the year, too, because it dealt with the consumerization of something sacred. Mom and Dad had agreed never to buy each other anything on the day. It was a false, Hallmark holiday. A sham. A moneymaking sideshow for insecure couples who didn’t have true love. I agreed with this, for the most part.”

“Look at that, Vera.”I tilt my head back and see a sky full of stars.“Can you tell which one is me?” he asks.I point to the brightest one.”

“Maybe if I hadn’t been so hell-bent on not becoming my parents, I could have saved Charlie. Maybe I would have been his girlfriend. Maybe we could have gotten married and been happy, regardless of who our parents were and what they did to each other.”

“I knew that once I went looking, I’d need a man like Dad—dependable and respectful toward women, and not into porn or weird rich old guys who bought teenage kids’ underwear.”

“You two would make a cute couple,” she says as she passes by with a full dough tray in her arms. I don’t know why she says it. We aren’t doing anything but folding boxes with the other drivers and telling dirty jokes.But we would.We would make a cute couple.”

“Do you think we'll get married one day?" I said."To each other?" Charlie asked."No, silly. I mean to other people." (But really, I'd meant to each other.)”

“He said, “Charlie isn’t like us, you know?” and I knew what he meant, but somehow it was that not-like-us that made me love Charlie more.”

“Humans want to conquer everyone they can, and buy everything they see. I think this is because humans have forgotten how to be happy. It's not their fault - it's not easy figuring out how to be happy in these days of anything-but-moderation.”

“I have gone from invisible Vera Dietz to invincible Vera Dietz.”

“There is nothing more disappointing than the coolest kid in the whole world turning drama queen on you.”

“...I guess when you believe the word of a complete liar, logic doesn't come into it.”

“Most people don't think past themselves. I know that. But I want Vera to see other people. To respect other people. To realize that the whole world is not here for her. I want her to see her duty to the world, not the other way around.”