An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England
Brock Clarke
Top 10 Best Quotes
“If only my mother had a book to hold, she wouldn't have looked so lonely. And maybe this was another reason why people read: not so they would feel less lonely, but so that other people would think they looked less lonely with a book in their hands and therefore not pity them and leave them alone.”
“Fear and love might leave a man complacent, but jealousy will always get him out of the van.”
“Oh no," I said, because if our life is just one endless song about hope and regret, then "oh no" is apparently that song's chorus, the words we always return to.”
“Because we both knew that sometimes the lies you tell are less frightening than the loneliness you might feel if you stopped telling them.”
“But maybe this is what happens when you hate someone for so long: the person you hate dies, but the hate stays with you, to keep you company.”
“All of this made me feel better about myself, and I was grateful to the books for teaching me-without my even having to read them- that there were people in the world more desperate, more self-absorbed, more boring than I was. - about memoirs”
“When I was a boy, I would read those postcards and know exactly why my father was doing what he was doing: he was taking a stab at greatness, that is, if greatness is simply another word for doing something different from what you were already doing--or maybe greatness is the thing we want to have so that other people will want to have us, or maybe greatness is merely the grail for our unhappy, striving selves, the thing we think we need but don't and can't get anyway.”
“Can a story be good only if it produces an effect? If the effect is a bad one, but intended, has the story done its job? Is it then a good story? If the story produces an effect other than the intended one, is it then a bad story? Can a story be said to produce an effect at all? Can a story actually do anything at all? ”
“When he did that, I didn't hate him anymore, I really didn't, and maybe this is why people do so many hateful things to the people that who love them: because it's so easy to stop hating someone if you've already started loving them.”
“They [my eyes] immediately started to tear up, tears being your eyes' way of forbidding you to look away,of forcing you to look at the world you've made or unmade. ”
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Book Keywords:
humor, regret, hope, life, philosophy, mistakes, memoirs
