Tom Spanbauer Quotes

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

Miracles are out there somewhere. You just got to find them.

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.

Life is absolutely, mysteriously beautiful.

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

Felt good, though, just being what I was.

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.

The universe has always conspired to fuck me up.

takes a devil to make a decent angel.

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

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.

I was wounded by a blow of love.

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.

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

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

An intention in your life to fold your life around.
I stood tall and strong and let him fall. His face against my chest. I reached down, put my arms under his knees, his legs dangled over my arm. One big heft, and I was holding George high in my arms.
There was nowhere to go, no place I knew, no solid, silent place in all the world. So I stood, held George, knotty pine everywhere I looked, men staring. Just stood. Put that solid, silent place in the world inside me and stood.
Stood and stood, held George, held his whole body, until he was quiet.

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

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Drop-dead freshly fucked gorgeous.

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 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.

Looking for who I am is who I am.

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!

There is nothing more lonely than a true artist.

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