Carolee Dean

“i carry a message that i can not read.the words may be haunting ,or tender or sweet.though what it says,i don not know.i still carry it with me ,where ever i go.”

“It's not the Destination...it's the Journey..”

“How do you know where a story begins?”

“So don’t ask no questions. Too much truth can be bad.”

“I was taking a nap in the theater one day while I ditched English, when I looked up and saw Jess on the stage. I had to pinch myself, because I figured either I was dreaming or else I’d died and gone to heaven—which given my history was probably not where I’d end up.”

“Dude, there should be a law against people singing that bad.”

“I have a class in Hermosa Beach that starts at eight, but …”I wanted to offer to pick up her car, drive her back to Hermosa Beach, take her to the moon.”

“Testimony to her belief that life could be managed if things were only kept in their proper places.”

“Did you know that seventy-five to eighty percent of juvenile offenders can’t read at grade level?”“Really?” This was news to me.“Your world becomes a much smaller place if you can’t read. You have far fewer options. It’s not the only factor, but it’s a big one. If they want to know how big to build a prison,all they have to do is look at the illiteracy statistics.”“They knew I was coming.”“You or someone like you.”“You knew it too, all those years ago, back in Quincy. That’s why you tried to help me. Because you knew I was coming here.”“Here or someplace like here.”

“As soon as I left one town, I was in another, each one a totally different world, as if an invisible box surrounded its edges, keeping everybody in their proper place.The rich stayed rich. The poor stayed poor. The troublemakers stayed in trouble.”

“It brings back a long-forgotten memory of Christmas, the year I turned six. I was supposed to be in bed, but I was up waiting and watching for my father or Santa Claus, whoever came first.”

“Hey, aren’t you that guy who fixes cars?” Katie asked,looking at my grease-covered work pants as if she couldn’t believe I ever left the garage.“Yeah, they let me out every now and then,” I said.”

“Do you ever look at the people around you and wonder how you ended up with them?”

“Want me to drive?” Wade asks. “I won’t take any detours.”I slam on the brakes and come to a dead stop right in the middle of the road. “Sure. Why not? My life is one big fucking detour,” I yell. Then I bang my head on the steering wheel and I can’t help it. I start to cry.”

“I won’t offer you a tired admonition to avoid my path. I won’t advise you to stay on the straight and narrow. I won’t suggest that you make good choices. I won’t even tell you to do the right thing. You can get that kind of advice from teachers and parents and TV evangelists, and if you are like me, you wouldn’t listen anyway. I just make one suggestion.Know what path you’re on.”

“Who cares about my voice? There are more important things going on in the world. I want to make a difference. I’m going to law school. I want to become a public defender.”I couldn’t believe she’d give up singing to work with scumbags like me. “By the time a guy ends up in front of the judge, it’s too late to make a difference.”“It’s never too late to make a difference,” she said.“All I’m saying is that with your music you could have an influence on people before they end up in trouble.”

“I used to think that words and music could change the world, but look at the people who have made it. You see their faces all over the tabloids talking about their latest stint in rehab”

“listening to Pastor Bob talk about mercy and redemption, I am filled with hope. Not the kind of expectation that comes from knowing you can pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, but the trust that comes from utter failure, from knowing you are pathetic and small and you’ve got no place to look but up.”

“Are you a virgin?” I asked, “A virgin who’s gonna tear out my heart?”“Yes … no … wait.” She looked at me. “I’m not going to rip out your heart.”“Thanks for clearing that up,” I said“Is that okay with you?” she asked softly.“Okay with me?”,“No, it’s not okay at all,” I replied.“Why not?” She looked down at her toes.“I want you to rip out my heart.”She smiled, pressed her hand to my chest, and said, “I could never do that.”You already have, I thought as I took her hand in mine”

“My head was spinning. I felt like I’d been drifting, lost at sea all my life, and now that I’d found dry land, I couldn’t quite get my bearings.”

“What happened?”“I tried to be somebody different from who I am and it didn’t work out.”“The world ain’t set up that way. Folks say we oughta be better than we are, but deep down they just want us to stay in our places. With our own kind.Messes up the natural order, otherwise.”

“Is she worth all that pain?” he asked me, smiling.“Definitely,” I said, still reeling from the events of the day.“But I don’t deserve her.”“Then be somebody who does.”“That’s what I intend to do.”

“When I get to the part about Jess kissing me on the Fourth of July and taking me to her beach house,I look at my father and wonder what it is like, seeing people only through a wall of glass. Never touching them.”

“It is hard to believe that a place this small can hold so much hate, and I have the terrible feeling I’ve only just seen the surface.”

“Where we goin’?” Wade whispers to me as we approach the white picket fence that surrounds the row of wooden crosses.For all I know my grandmother could be planning to shoot us and bury us with the rest of the family, but I don’t think it would help to share this notion with Wade”

“Blood never forgets. It has a memory of an ancient path toward home.”

“So quit asking everybody else questions, unless you’re ready to answer some questions yourself.”

“We sit in silence, all the unanswered and unasked questions thicker than the wall of glass between us.”

“To my son Dylan.I’ve written this book for you.It’s a guide for how not to live your life.I’m sending it out into the world in the hopesthat someday it will find you.Even if I never do.All my love,Dad”

“But thinkin’ you owe people is dangerous business.”

“Stop jacking with me, Dad. All I ever wanted was the truth.”“That’s the problem. People think if they can add up all the facts, they’ll end up with the truth, but that’s like sewin’ body parts together in the hopes you’ll get a man.”

“I stand to leave, but my father says, “Wait!” over the red telephone. “Let me just look at you a minute.” He smiles at me proudly. “I know you been in some trouble, son, but you turned out good. That’s all I ever wanted,” he tells me. Then he puts his hand against the glass and I put my hand against the glass. “I love you,” he says.“I love you, too,” I say back.”

“I washolding herand she washolding me.Couldn’t seewe both weregoing down.When holding onis the only thingyou’ve got,how can you knowthis is how lovers drown?”

“This is the house where they found Jack dead.This is the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the floorin the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the wall, splattered in red,standing next to the floor,in the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the door leading into the tomb.This is the wall splattered in red,standing next to the floorin the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the clock hanging over the door.This is the wall splattered in redstanding next to the floorin the roomin the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the bird coming out of the clockhanging over the doorin the wallby the floorin the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the song in the heart of the birdcoming out of the clockhanging over the doorin the wallby the floorin the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.These are the wordsto the song of the birdcoming out of the clockhanging over the doorin the wallby the floorin the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the man who sits in the cell.Eleven years have come and gone.Jack is dead, but he lives on.He waits in silence, but he still can hear.The ancient song echoes in his ears.The sound of time with its tick tick TOCK!The song of the bird coming out of the clock,hanging over a door leading into a tomb,where there stand four walls splattered all in red,and a floor where a good man fell and bled,in the room of the house where they found Jack dead.These are the words of the cuckoo’s song,as he asks us who will right these wrongs.The cuckoo sings and the cuckoo wails,for the dead who cannot tell their tales.Rage all you want, but at close of day,justice is mine, and I will repay.”

“We are all rotting, making our way from womb to tomb, to the rhythm of the great clock counting downward to the grave.”

“This is what love is. Not the moments on the beach, or under the stars or the trees, or in the moonlight. Love is sitting together in the quiet, waiting for death to come.Knowing you’re not alone.”

“I have loved and been loved, thoroughly and deeply by good and decent people who believed in me. Who let me dare to believe in myself.”

“the road less traveled might just be the ride of your life!”

“Those who have witnessed executions say there is no sound worse than the weeping of mother watching her son being put to death. They're wrong. There is one sound that is worse. There is silence.”

“Words are like people, I think. Put too many of them too close together and they cause trouble.”

“I got words in me, Jess, fighting to find a way out. Sometimes there's so many words and they get so crowded in my skull I think my head is gonna explode. I want to write them down. I've tried, but most of the time my thoughts and my feelings are bigger than what I can get on paper.”

“I'm Writing my stoy. But i'm also plotting my escape from this prison cell.This is my plan.I will do it with words.I will write them by day.I will write them by night.I will write them on the walls,the stalls, the halls.I will write them in big bold inkon posters i hang on the concrete blocks.I will write them on little pieces of paperI stuff on the mattress and the pillow.I will write them with fingersbent and cramped from use.I will write them in bloodif i have to,but only my own.And i will keep writing them,again, and again, and again,until i fill this prison cell so full of words,that the bars bend and buckle and burstbecause they cannot contain themAnd then I will be free.”

“I have learned there is more than one way to die.”

“Every clock is a bomb, ticking away at the minutes of our lives, counting off the seconds one by one before we die.At birth a heart it given a certain number of beats. The clock is counting them off one by one and will not allow a man any more than his allotted share.”

“The mind can only remember what it's willing to remember - because if you are guilty, then the truth is not the thing that sets you free. It's the thing that gets you locked away.”

“Figure out what truth you're hidin' that you can't admit even to yourself”

“A man's beliefs are his destiny. As soon as my father believed his life was over, it was.”

“Don't try to bullshit a bullshitter.”

“As long as you're breathing, there's still hope.”

“How far can you go down the wrong path before you can't get back on the right one?”