S.G. Browne Quotes

The problem with memories is that they're not objective. One person's memory is another person's fiction. Everything is a matter of perception, defined by individual feelings, beliefs, and desires. A single, objective reality doesn't exist. All of the input and stimuli we encounter gets filtered through personal experience and interpretation and mood. Nothing is definite.

It's a lot to live up to. These pressures of achieving. From the moment you're born, you're pounded with the expectations of what you need to actualize in order to become a success. Go to college. Get married. Raise a family. It's what you're supposed to do. The plans you're supposed to make. The life you're supposed to live. Diverge from the norm and you're frowned upon. Questioned. Shunned. There's something wrong with you if you're not interested in improving yourself. If you can't make a commitment of marriage. If you don't want to have children. So people earn a college degree so they can get a good job. They work at a job they hate just to earn a living. They spend two months' salary on an engagement ring. They pop out a couple of kids they don't really want just so they can fit in. Because it's what their parents did. Because it's what society expects you to do. Because it's safer to take the same path everyone else has traveled. Truth is, no one's listening to Robert Frost.

All these commercials about health and diet and fitness. All of these ads for waistlines and libidos and teeth whiteners. If you're not taking care of yourself or eating right or exercising, if you're overweight or you have a small penis or you don't have bright enough teeth, then there's something wrong with you. Spiritually. Physically. Morally. Instead of being defined by your actions, you're defined instead by your smile. Your sexual performance. Your percentage of body fat.

Maberry is a master at writing scenes that surge and hum with tension. The pacing is relentless. He presses the accelerator to the floor and never lets up, taking you on a ride that leaves your heart pounding. It's almost impossible to put this book down. Dead of Night is an excellent read.

If you've never woken up from a car accident to discover that your wife is dead and you're an animated, rotting corpse, then you probably wouldn't understand.

It's not surprising that he doesn't have any manners. Most kids today don't. But if you ask me, it's a direct reflection of bad parenting. I can say this with complete certainty because I've never parented a day in my life and I enjoy making sweeping generalizations about how other people do a piss-poor job at something about which I have absolutely no experience.

But when you think about it, people pretend to be someone else every day. Gay people who pretend to be straight. Depressed people who pretend to be happy. Smart people who pretend to be dumb. People are always pretending to be someone else to fit in. To be accepted. To be loved. Men who pretend to enjoy their marriage. Employees who pretend to enjoy their jobs. Women who pretend to enjoy sex. They all slip into a role. Put on a mask. Be whoever it is they need to be for an hour. A day. A lifetime. Then they slip out of that role and play another. People show you what they want you to see. Or what they think you want to see, not who they really are. The reality lies somewhere in between.

How am I supposed to take it easy when all around me these creatures are in a perpetual state of ignorance? ...

My mother tries to explain that I need support and that I'm just going through a period of adjustment. "Like puberty," she says.

And I wonder if he'll be a she. It's not entirely out of the question. Two thousand years ago, no one would have listened to a female Messiah. And although not a whole lot has changed, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if the next Messiah turned out to be someone like Jodie Foster or Linda Hamilton or Sigourney Weaver. Someone who can kick some ass and still project all of the compassion of the Madonna.

This growing attached to people really sucks.

Jimmy nods. Being with him like this, without the attitude and looking at me with complete trust, almost makes me understand why parents would go through the trouble of dealing with all of the bullshit of having kids. Then I remember how he told me I smelled like cat pee, and the moment passes.

If I could blush, I'd be a third degree sunburn.