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Wolf in White Van

John Darnielle

Top 10 Best Quotes

“This is why people cry at the movies: because everybody’s doomed. No one in a movie can help themselves in any way. Their fate has already staked its claim on them from the moment they appear onscreen.”

“There are only two stories: either you go forward or you die.”

“I didn’t feel like I’d really won anything, but I had come through the day no worse off than I’d come into it, which, as I have been telling myself for many years now, is a victory whether it feels like one or not.”

“People trying to help you when you’re past help are raw and helpless. Nobody wins: you get nothing; they feel worse.”

“It isn’t really much of a mystery, this occasional need I have to comfort my father. I did something terrible to his son once.”

“In video games you sometimes run into what they call a side quest, and if you don't manage to figure it out you can usually just go back into the normal world of the game and continue on toward your objective. I felt like I couldn't find my way back to the world now: like I was somebody locked in a meaningless side quest, in a stuck screen.”

“but people underestimate just how starved everybody is for some magic pathway back into childhood.”

“There is something fierce and starved about first ideas.”

“Some things are hard to explain to your parents. Some things are hard to explain, period, but your parents especially are never going to understand them.”

“You should avoid seeing too much of yourself anywhere: in the outside world, in others, in the imagined worlds that give you shelter.”

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Book Keywords:

shelter, meaninglessness, imagined-worlds, first-ideas, video-games

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