David Berman > Quotes

“I believe the stars are the headlights of angels driving from heaven to save us
to save us...Won't you look at the sky?
They're driving from heaven into our eyes. And though final words are so hard to devise, I promise that I'll always remember your pretty eyes.”
― David Berman

“You can't change the feeling
but you can change your feelings about the feeling in a second or two”
― david berman

“There were no new ways to understand the world, only new days to set our understanding against.”
― David Berman, Actual Air

“...and my signature is drawn in magic marker
on the lower right hand corner of the window

so when something passes in the dark
it's captured for a moment inside my work.”
― David Berman, Actual Air

“This is meant to be in praise of the interval called hangover,
a sadness not co-terminous with hopelessness,
and the North American doubling cascade
that (keep going) “this diamond lake is a photo lab”
and if predicates really do propel the plot
then you might see Jerusalem in a soap bubble
or the appliance failures on Olive Street
across these great instances,
because “the complex Italians versus the basic Italians”
because what does a mirror look like (when it´s not working)
but birds singing a full tone higher in the sunshine.

I´m going to call them Honest Eyes until I know if they are,
in the interval called slam clicker, Realm of Pacific,
because the second language wouldn´t let me learn it
because I have heard of you for a long time occasionally
because diet cards may be the recovery evergreen
and there is a new benzodiazepene called Distance,

anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship.

I suppose a broken window is not symbolic
unless symbolic means broken, which I think it sorta does,
and when the phone jangles
what´s more radical, the snow or the tires,
and what does the Bible say about metal fatigue
and why do mothers carry big scratched-up sunglasses
in their purses.

Hello to the era of going to the store to buy more ice
because we are running out.
Hello to feelings that arrive unintroduced.
Hello to the nonfunctional sprig of parsley
and the game of finding meaning in coincidence.

Because there is a second mind in the margins of the used book
because Judas Priest (source: Firestone Library)
sang a song called Stained Class,
because this world is 66% Then and 33% Now,

and if you wake up thinking “feeling is a skill now”
or “even this glass of water seems complicated now”
and a phrase from a men´s magazine (like single-district cognac)
rings and rings in your neck,
then let the consequent misunderstandings
(let the changer love the changed)
wobble on heartbreakingly nu legs
into this street-legal nonfiction,
into this good world,
this warm place
that I love with all my heart,

anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship.”
― David Berman, “Cassette County”

“As a way of getting in touch with my origins
every night I set the alarm clock
for the time I was born so that waking up
becomes a historical reenactment...”
― David Berman, Actual Air

“Nude descending a staircase headless,
not knowing where she is going
but brave because all dreams lack conclusions
and she is not enlisted to an ending.”
― David Berman

“He stood and watched the night push itself into the bar and the light push it back out.”
― David Berman, Actual Air

“There are things I've given up on
Like recording funny answering machine messages.
It's part of growing older
And the human race as a group has matured along the same lines.
It seems our comedy dates the quickest.
If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes
I hope you won't be insulted
if I say you're trying too hard.
Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live
seem slow-witted and obvious now.”
― David Berman

“When there's trouble I don't like running, but I'm afraid I got more in common with who I was, than who I am becoming”
― David Berman

“As a way of getting in touch with my origins
every night I set the alarm clock
for the time I was born so that waking up
becomes a historical reenactment and the first thing I do”
― David Berman

“It takes a society to raise a generation.”
― David Berman

“It would be a tragedy to spend your whole life desperately wanting to be something that you already were all along.”
― David Berman

“out in the wide readership,his younger brother was kicking an ice bucket in the woods behind the Marriott,

his younger brother who was missing that part of the brain that allows you to make out with your pillow.

Poor kid.”
― David Berman

“I passed out on the fourteenth floor. The CPR was so erotic.”
― David Berman

“The Spine of the Snowman"

On the moon, an old caretaker in faded clothes is holed up in his
pressurized cabin. The fireplace is crackling, casting sparks onto the
instrument panel. His eyes are flickering over the earth,

looking for Illinois,

looking for his hometown, Gnarled Heritage,
until his sight is caught in its chimneys and frosted aerials.

He thinks back on the jeweler's son who skated the pond
behind his house, and the local supermarket with aisles
that curved off like country roads.

Yesterday the robot had been asking him about snowmen.
He asked if they had minds.
No, the caretaker said, but he'd seen one
that had a raccoon burrowed up inside the head.

"Most had a carrot nose, some coal, buttons, and twigs for arms,
but others were more complex.
Once they started to melt, things would rise up
from inside the body. Maybe a gourd, which was an organ,
or a long knobbed stick, which was the spine of the snowman."

The robot shifted uncomfortably in his chair.”
― David Berman, Actual Air