Tom Spanbauer

“We're all just in our bodies for a moment in our life. Such a brave and lovely act it is to let the body celebrate.”

“It's the responsibility of the survivor to tell the story.”

“All this family shit! Harry said. How can you reinvent your life if the original versions won't leave you alone?”

“All daring and courage, I said, All iron endurance of misfortune, make for a finer, nobler type of manhood.”

“You're going this way and then shit happens and then you're going that way.”

“Some people like to bitch, Rose said. Bitching is OK. But for me, I choose a kind of joy -- a lucid compulsion -- a polemical kind of fuck-you-motherfucker joy.”

“The key to being a warrior is not to be afraid of who you are.”

“Maybe you've had skin next to your skin, but when was the last time you let yourself be touched?”

“Why else do we live, except to be loved and remembered by those we love?”

“Life is a mess, Rose said. You can fix the mess human beings make, Rose said, But you can't fix the mess being human is.”

“So I'm smoking in the house, Mother said. And Bobbie's got a dog in her room. And your son Will's got an Injun in his. So there it is, Mother said. Like it or lump it!”

“There's hundreds of corners on this island, Crystal said. And there are thousands of us. Exiles from the heartland without a heart. Out of the old country, a brand-new tribe, dancing to new tunes around a bucket of fire in a vacant lot.”

“God made man because he loves to hear stories, Alessandro said. That's a good story, huh?”

“The only way out is in ...”

“Books are in the mind, Grandfather Alessandro said. Too many books and you forget your body is in the world.”

“Fuck hope and all the tiny little towns, one-horse towns, the one-stoplight towns, three-bars country-music jukebox-magic parquet-towns, pressure-cooker pot-roast frozen-peas bad-coffee married-heterosexual towns, crying-kids-in-the-Oldsmobile-beat-your-kid-in the-Thriftway-aisles towns, one-bank one-service-station Greyhound-Bus-stop-at-the-Pepsi-Cafe towns, two-television towns, Miracle Mile towns, Viv's Double Wide Beauty Salon towns, schizophrenic-mother towns, buy-yourself-a-handgun towns, sister-suicide towns, only-Injun's-a-dead-Injun towns, Catholic-Protestant-Mormon-Baptist religious-right five-churches Republican-trickle-down-to-poverty family-values sexual-abuse pro-life creation-theory NRA towns, nervous-mother rodeo-clown-father those little-town-blues towns.”

“For the most part, I'd say if you crossed a cat with a smart dog, made him a matriarchal vegetarian, gave him sleek beauty, a mass of muscle, and the desire to run, then what you'd have is a horse.”

“The Shy Hunter is terrified that others will destroy the truth within his heart, Rose said, And so the Shy Hunter armours himself ... thus armoured, he watches and waits and studies the world meticulously, hunting the world for prey ... Prey not in the sense of devouring or murder, Rose said, But prey in the sense of hunting for sore truths within another human heart.”

“You know, Rose said, You're not the first man in history who thinks his cock is the path to wisdom. You're not the first man to make his hard-on into the Holy Grail.”

“Weird here is something we aspire to, something we perfect, get degrees in, get awards for.”

“There is nothing more lonely than a true artist.”

“The fates lead her who will; who won't they drag.”

“Identity is your role in life, the part you play. Individuality is who you are, and who you are is revealed to you if you can get to complete presence.”

“Every time you hear a car alarm, Ruby said, another New Yorker has gone to hell.”

“So put your costume on, honey! Ruby said. Set Harlequin free! That party monster of yours is screaming to come out. Let the monster out!”

“To admit ignorance is the highest knowledge. It is the necessary condition for all learning.”

“The gods know what's important, what's wrong about you. They know everything. If you go out searching for the Holy Grail, they won't let you find it.”

“I was wounded by a blow of love.”

“LA is the me city, Ruby said, and New York is the you city. In LA it's fuck me. In New York it's fuck you.”

“They're from France, Ruby said, Vogue magazine. They only speak French except for fuck you.”

“That's when you stop being one way and start being another, Ruby said. Not something many people can do, or want to do. In fact, Ruby said, The only people who cross over, cross over because they're on some kind of Mission Impossible.I could no longer live and stay the way I was, I said.”

“Life is absolutely, mysteriously beautiful.”

“At our table in the corner by the window, huddled around a flame in a red glass, all of us, body to body to body to body. The touch that proves you're not alone, that someone else is there.”

“Drop-dead freshly fucked gorgeous.”

“Things start where you don't know and end up where you know. When you know is when you ask, How did this start?”

“Have some fun while you wait for the will of heaven.”

“The way I figure it, we know we got this world, so live in this one while you’re here. I figure the next one will take care of itself.”

“Trying to change yourself is as hard as trying to change the universe. Maybe there’s no difference. The fact is, shit happens none of us plan on.”

“A person without her or his own truth ain't a person at all, Ida said. Anybody who tells you different—is a jackass, and no longer deserves to be called human being.”

“With tybo men there isn't much difference between fucking and killing.”

“The universe has always conspired to fuck me up.”

“Looking for who I am is who I am.”

“Sometimes the world is so beautiful it hurts.”

“Her heartbeat was in her hands, her heart beat the way she moved her head, her whole body was her heart beating.”

“takes a devil to make a decent angel.”