Davy Rothbart > Quotes

“I often wished that I could split myself a hundred ways and live a hundred separate lives [...]. But in the end, I supposed, we only had one life to lead, and the roads not taken would always outnumber and outshine the roads we end up taking, day by day, without plan.”
― Davy Rothbart, My Heart Is an Idiot: Essays

“There’s no key to the universe, you just have to point your way in one direction, keep going, keep going, keep going, and see what happens.”
― Davy Rothbart, My Heart Is an Idiot: Essays

“That's how the universe worked at times: little things - the tiniest things - could catapult you toward a good life, but you had to be open and you had to be paying attention. Love wasn't purely destined, it relied on hiccups of fate - Aimee Mann, someone else's trip to Peru, a black dog.”
― Davy Rothbart, The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas: Stories

“It's appealing to imagine that if we can just get that one thing in our life to work out-- [...] that everything will be solved, absolved, good to go for good. I slipped into that way of thinking way too often, I admitted to Missy, even though I knew that sometimes in life all of a sudden there you were--standing with your Technics turntables just across the Canadian border, and you're not a new you, you're just you, but in Canada.”
― Davy Rothbart, My Heart Is an Idiot: Essays

“Yes, she was the girl playing basketball with all the boys in the park, collecting cans by the side of the road, keeping secret pet kittens in an empty boxcar in the woods, walking alone at night through the rail yards, teaching her little sister how to kiss, reading out loud to herself, so absorbed by the story, singing sadly in the tub, building a fort from the junked cars out in the meadow, by herself in the front row at the black-and-white movies or in the alley, gazing at an eddy of cigarette stubs and trash and fall leaves, smoking her first cigarette at dusk by a pile of dead brush in the desert, then wishing at the stars--she was all of them, and she was so much more that just just her that I still didn't know.”
― Davy Rothbart, The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas: Stories

“Marry her right away. Tomorrow, if you want. You don’t know how much time you get with someone, so you might as well start right away.”
― Davy Rothbart, My Heart Is an Idiot: Essays

“My dashed hopes putt-putted bravely to life once more, like a bug that gets stomped on but keeps pulling itself across the floor.”
― Davy Rothbart, The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas: Stories

“I had abandoned Elana; I deserved her uncertainty. I closed my eyes and focused on her touch. Perhaps she wouldn't have understood had I tried to explain it to her, but to me Elana was not only Elana--she was the sad-eyed love of mine who used to bag groceries at Woodley's in Buffalo; she was the sweet one who always sat across from me on the city bus in Niagara Falls; she was the girl I'd picked up hitchhiking in Mobile and dropped off in New Orleans, brash, full of sarcastic humor, but truly lonely and scared; she was the one I'd nabbed pinching Newports for her dad from the Marathon station I'd worked at in Bakersfield (I'd softened and paid for the pack myself); yes, she was the girl playing basketball with all the boys in the park, collecting cans by the side of the road, keeping secret pet kittens in an empty boxcar in the woods, walking alone at night through the rail yards, teaching her little sisters how to kiss, reading out loud to herself, so absorbed by the story, singing sadly in the tub, building a fort from the junked cars out in the meadow, by herself in the front row at the black-and-white movies or in the alley, gazing at an eddy of cigarette stubs and trash and fall leaves, smoking her first cigarette at dusk by a pile of dead brush in the desert, then wishing at the stars-she was all of them, and she was so much more that was just her that I still didn't know.”
― Davy Rothbart

“I started playing that game I play when I'm feeling lonely, the one where I review all of my prior relationships, marveling that so many sweet, smart, pretty girls have come into my life and that I've found a way to fuck things up with every one of them.”
― Davy Rothbart, My Heart Is an Idiot: Essays