Adam Rapp > Quotes

“I don't mind him not talking so much, because you can hear his voice in your heart; the same way you can hear a song in your head even if there isn't a radio playing; the same way you can hear those blackbirds flying when they're not in the sky”
― Adam Rapp, 33 Snowfish

“It was like losing an important weight-bearing bone, and I knew I would spend the rest of my life trying to figure out how to walk the streets without it. ”
― Adam Rapp, The Year of Endless Sorrows

“It was at that moment that I came to the conclusion that there is some link between plants and loneliness. ”
― Adam Rapp, The Year of Endless Sorrows

“Love,
Jamie

P.S. I can't believe you're dying. Please don't die.”
― Adam Rapp, Punkzilla

“Back to his various modes of escape and survival. Because you have to escape to survive, as you must survive to escape.”
― Adam Rapp, Nocturne: A Play

“And then again, maybe it was some weird noise in my brother’s head, some little digital murmur he never told anyone about. I’ve heard about that – how you wake up one day and there’s like this permanent dial tone droning somewhere behind the meat in your head, a little Dustbuster trapped where the brain saves you from going crazy. After a while you wind up ending it all just to make things quiet again.”
― Adam Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

“On top of everything else, Boobie's got the clap.”
― Adam Rapp, 33 Snowfish

“I was so in love I went into my room and drank half a bottle of Robitussin.”
― Adam Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

“And then all of a sudden I realized how little time we have. Like on the earth, I mean. And when I say we, I mean everyone. It was a profound realization, and I suddenly had to share this fact with Mary. I know that sounds insane because of how it was already after midnight and all the other crazy things that had happened that day, but it was one of the most important feelings I’ve ever had – my chest was swelling and everything. It felt like there were only so many hours left on the earth – that’s the hardest part about being alive.”
― Adam Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

“I guess I'm just afraid of whats going to happen. Because you can't run forever. There's only so much pavement that the road makers lay down. After a while, the highway quits going north and it just turns into sky. And you can't go anywhere in the sky unless you have a plane or some kind of rocket.”
― 33 snowfish - Adam Rapp

“Books don't change lives... People change lives... Sometimes, if you're lucky, if you get the thing right, a book can say some important things and that's all fine and good... but a book is just an artifact... a thing that sits on a desk or a shelf... People make the real difference... People and love...”
― Adam Rapp, Decelerate Blue

“When I got inside, I just sort of stood there. There’s nothing stranger than the smell of someone else’s house. The scent goes right to your stomach. Mary’s house smelled like lemon furniture polish and oatmeal cookies and logs in a fireplace. For some reason it made me want to curl up in the fetal position. I could have slept right there on their kitchen table.”
― Adam Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

“No one answered. You could hear the light buzzing over us. I love that sound. It means school isn't working, that the teachers are losing the battle.”
― Adam Rapp, The Children and the Wolves

“After his rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Welton just stared straight ahead at the alter as if he were waiting for Jesus to climb down off the cross and escape with him. They would load up in Dantly’s Skylark and the three of them would go score some Ex in Cedar Rapids. Jesus would like totally ride shotgun and scout for cops.”
― Adam Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

“I imagine a soul is a little perfect crystal egg floating in your chest. Somewhere deeper than where they put your heart. Somewhere so deep inside that the doctors can't find it with all their machines and microcameras.”
― Adam Rapp, The Children and the Wolves

“At the funeral my stitches were itching like crazy, but it didn’t bother me much because I was like totally tripping on the codeine they’d prescribed for the pain. They cremated my mom and stuffed her ashes into a pine box and put an eight-by-ten photo next to it. In the photo she was wearing too much makeup and it made me want to smash it with my fist.”
― Adam Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

“Things were pretty cold-blooded back in Rockdale.

That's when my arms were so pretty I could hold them up to the light and see the veins curling all clean and smooth like little blue branches.”
― Adam Rapp, 33 Snowfish

“Once I heard Dantly tell Welton that the Native Americans used to call that particular part of the morning “between the wolf and the dog” because the sky is so deep blue and spooky or whatever that you can’t tell what’s what. Is that a wolf on that hill or a dog? A man or a monkey? A saint or the devil?”
― Adam Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

“I asked her if she liked PJ Harvey and she said that she liked her old stuff mostly and that Uh Huh Her was pretty good too and then I tried not looking at her for a minute because she was starting to mad own my gaze like in a magnetic way and I didn't want to sweat her too much.”
― Adam Rapp, Punkzilla

“To do it right, you need three people,” he explained. “One to hold em’ up. One to pocket the cash. And one to wait in the car. Like the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Hang on a second,” he said, cutting himself off. He pulled over to the side of the road, shifted into park, opened the door, leaned his head out and puked. It sounded like he was giving birth through his neck.”
― Adam Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

“My dad smelled sort of like mustard, which is probably due to the fact that in the bed I also discovered a thing of Hellmann’s. I wanted to grab it and squirt it in his eyes, but I couldn’t reach it.”
― Adam Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

“So I think I’m in love with Silent Starla, who isn’t all that silent after all. In group she hardly ever talks, and in the cafeteria she just sort of stares off in this dreamy way. She’s from Oak Park, Illinois, and when she left my room, she said, “We can go together, but I won’t fuck you without a condom. I like your eyes.”
― Adam Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

“I have to admit, for a second it was sort of turning me on, because I kept imagining Georgia in a very positive light. She was donning designer swimwear with fringe or whatever and she was lying on her stomach with the bikini-top straps untied. I was lathering her up with sun block and my hands were getting into all the cracks and crevices. The image got me pretty excited, and before I knew it, I had an erection. At first I thought it would go away, but it kept getting worse, like harder in that painful way. So that’s when I did something a little weird – I started barking at it. Like a Great Dane or a pit bull or whatever. I literally barked at my erection! And it worked, I’m not kidding.”
― Adam Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

“Mrs. Leene says I should think about people in the present tense.
“It forces you to take responsibility for them,” she says.”
― Adam Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

“There must be some unwritten law that says about fifty people have to move into your house when somebody dies. If it weren’t for the smell of death clinging to the walls, you might think it was your family’s turn to host the month neighborhood potluck supper. A little beef and bingo at the Nugents’.”
― Adam Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

“Once I looked over at Welton and he was wiping his nose. I couldn’t tell if he was crying or on nasal spray.”
― Adam Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

“We only have so much time, Mary,” I remember saying. “Time will kill you – it really will.”
― Adam Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

“I’m convinced that her obsession with Jesus was far more romantic than spiritual. I think she was actually attracted to him. I sincerely thought that one day while out on a grocery run, she would find some skinny, bearded, out-of-work Foote guy on the side of the road and, convinced that he was our anorexic Son of God, rescue him and head for some unincorporated Christian town in the middle of Illinois with a bingo hall and lots of roadside crucifixes, never to return.”
― Adam Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

“That’s when I started doing the Our Father again. I have no idea why. It just sort of poured out of me. And I recited it way too fast, like there was some sort of creepy priest in the back seat trying to damn me or something. But when I got to the part about the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, I said the Kingdom, the Power and the Gory. I even repeated the line, knowing that I was making a mistake, but Gory just kept coming out. It felt like someone else was making me say it, which is a pretty frightening situation when you’re all alone and you’ve just hijacked your parents’ car.”
― Adam Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

“Myra tries her best not to read too quickly, but sometimes the words start to tumble and the voice of her narrator gallops in her head as if to overwhelm her and she has to force her eyes away from the page to calm herself.”
― Adam Rapp, Wolf at the Table