Carol Plum-Ucci

“You can't photograph the hugest mysteries of the universe that really have nothing to do with what shows up before your eyes, under a microscope, through a telescope, in the pages of books.”

“The line between complete joy and complete terror is often thin.”

“At times there's a razor-thin line between truth and insanity.”

“A person could explode if he had to think too much.”

“Life is all we have, and if we can't look at it honestly, are we really living?”

“Love and truth have no correlation.”

“I think desire is the most powerful force in the universe.”

“The university doesn't THINK; the university KNOWS. If the university says it's Thursday, then it's Thursday.”

“Sometimes the things you search far and wide for are right under your nose.”

“People's lives can look so good on the outside and be so much dark shadow on the inside.”

“Why is it that everyone loves to see the rich person get flushed down the toilet? Why is it people will spend four dollars to buy a magazine just so they can read about some Hollywood star's divorce? Or arrest? Or bad luck? I have no idea what Hollywood crimes have actually been told truthfully, but at least I have the brains to say I don't know.”

“I don't know if anybody thinks of themselves as bad. We all have excuses.”

“People love to see you get ahead — so long as you don't get farther ahead than they are.”

“You can almost believe what you know is not true when you really have to.”

“Everyone who doesn't want to believe in supernormal powers says the people who experience them are psycho. What the hell kind of a world is this if all magic moments are psychotic?”

“You can never see a plant grow, but they do.”

“Thin veneers can cover a mountain of problems around here when nobody's looking at the details.”

“I found myself in a place that was thorny, but because I was so used to being there, it bore out certain twisted sensations of comfort. It's a place called «alone».”

“People make their own choices, and sometimes those choices suck.”

“My one challenge with the support group that I'd become involved with on campus is that the people seem to spend as much time talking about their ill-begotten pasts as their promising futures. It's as if people are drawn to looking back. They can't move on until it all makes sense. Humbly submitted: It never does.”

“It's fine to be insane as long as you keep it to yourself.”

“There is something very cool about writing your worst memories through someone else's eyes. You start to see what happened to you... almost as if it happened to somebody else. Especially if that made-up person is nice, it's a great exercise because there are many mean people in this world.”

“There you go: Someone who puts «positive thinking» and «shit» in the same concept can inspire some serious eye-rolling if you're the type who works at keeping your thought-life healthy.”

“My belief in ghosts swings with the wind. But my belief that the cemetery felt happy and not sad—I've never changed my mind about that.”

“Life is excellent or life blows, depending on how you look at it.”

“Life is a journey, and I may not have always lived up to my ability, but I have always lived purposefully, and I guess readers get caught up with me, raising the questions, looking for the answers, looking to be a little more understanding, a little less judgmental, a little more merciful. I hope so.”

“There is justice in an insanely cruel world.”

“People will do and think whatever it is they have to in order to survive.”

“Nobody stopped believing that other people were more guilty than they were. Why do people have so much trouble seeing their own faults but such an easy time seeing everyone else's?”

“No friend of my parents is a pervert. It's physiologically impossible.”

“People can love their lies, tell their lies, believe their own lies until hell pays a visit.”

“You can't find your life, or your peace, in the middle of a bezillion eyes staring at you.”

“You're in my personal space, so get out of it.”

“When you go into a room, you knock first. If you start asking people questions and they start tilting back in their chairs, it means they don't want to talk about it. It means if you look at something on their computer screens, they're likely to knock your brains out with a baseball bat.”

“«People used to say I was weird,» he said. «I used to care. But I don't anymore. People shouldn't care, people shouldn't use words like weird once you hit junior year. Everyone's weird. That's the way I look at it.»”

“Don't tell people you care about them when all you really care about is getting your own way.”

“Love covers a myriad of plausibility structures.”

“Sometimes it has to feel worse before it feels better.”

“Problem with the big philosophers is they cared about ideas more than people. Hegel would probably have stepped over a guy trying to slit his wrists outside a bar — to get to all the people he could sit and bullshit with inside. Did you know half of philosophy was first put into words by people shot in the ass?”

“Of all those books you've read? There's got to be something, somewhere in them, to help us laugh at a situation like this.”

“I don’t really think our greatest memories are always great while they’re happening.”

“If you can understand human behavior, it can’t hurt you nearly as much.”

“But not hurting people and knowing how to get along with people, ... they're different.”

“People only see as far as they are able and the rest of the truth is lost on them.”

“You're making it sound like it's more dangerous to have a slightly weird family, than a totally weird family.”

“I only wish to be gone. Therefore, I AM.”

“It was as if the story had been added to, so as not to disgust people too much.”

“Things don't have to be sane when they're normal.”

“Don't you give me that postmodern bullshit. There is truth, There is a truth. And what you want, or you feel, or you need, isn't going to change the truth. Any more than it's going to topple a skyscraper. There's truth, and there's belief. Don't call a mule a stallion.”

“He says you don't often find angels in places like happy homes and rich people's backyard parties. He says that angels flock to places like hospitals and homelss shelters and jails, because those people realize they need help. And do they are able to believe in strange phenomena. Funny how the world is backward. The really comfortable people don't always see much supernaturally, and to the ones who have to struggle, it's, like, breathing in their faces. The first are last... and the last are first.”