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Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a snob. I don’t have a problem with Applebee’s per se. But I think we can all agree, as a civilized society, that lives shouldn’t change there. Significant things shouldn’t begin or end at Applebee’s. You shouldn’t walk into Applebee’s as one thing and then leave as something else entirely.
world has this uncanny knack for kicking people while they’re down,
Like pretty much every cat I’ve ever met, Jeter swings back and forth between loving me and trying to murder me, so I never know exactly what I’m getting.
“Damn right she is. You fuck a fireman behind your husband’s back, you go to the top of the dead-to-me list. Bolded and underlined.”
All things considered, though, it’s probably a bad sign that even a toddler can tell that I’m in way over my head.
That’s what people do now. They don’t disagree, they hate.”
Never trust someone who isn’t miserable at least half of the time.
“Here because reading is fundamental,
That’s the thing about the word vagina: it really carries in a quiet place.
“There are two types of guys in this world,” she says. “Guys who know that ‘So It Goes’ is a Kurt Vonnegut reference, and guys who I want absolutely nothing to do with.
In my experience, Fox News isn’t something you can tune out, like a game show or a cable movie you’ve seen a dozen times. The colors, the moving logos, the giant fonts, the . . . well . . . the things they actually say. It’s like the television equivalent of one of those cymbal-banging monkey toys being duct-taped to your forehead.
They referred to it, officially, as a “sabbatical,” which sounded like I was being sent off into the woods to find higher meaning.
Sometimes people throw things away. That doesn’t mean those things aren’t really, really good. Most of the time, it just means that person didn’t know what they had.”
All girls like scruffy—it’s wired into our DNA. Cavewoman stuff.
“Wear sunscreen, you dumb little bitches.”
Generally speaking, it’s difficult not to be at least mildly terrified of a girl who might, at any moment, take her shirt off.
I touch my Hot Pocket. It should be cool enough by sometime next week to not completely fuck my mouth up.
I realize how utterly amazing it is that we’re all able as humans to go about our daily lives without constantly obsessing over the fact that each of us will almost certainly be in a sterile bed someday, medicated and slowly dying. This officially marks the most depressing thing that has ever crossed my mind.
It’s probably not fair to feel like this—to insist that our moms and dads somehow exist in suspended animation.
“You look like a short, slightly gay James Bond,” says Jerry. Which is totally the look I was going for.
A belt. A few belts. How many belts is a normal amount of belts to have? I don’t know.
We hold on to the shitty things the tightest, for some reason.
There really are no good options in life, sometimes, you know.
“Don’t beat yourself up. Nothing’s new anymore. We’ve already experienced everything there is to experience by watching movies. We’re basically all just going through the motions.”
Eating with children at a restaurant is like eating with a live grenade. It’s going to explode every time. You just don’t know when.”
“Sometimes, it feels like I went to the zoo and they gave me two chimpanzees, and now I have to take them places and buy them food and raise them like they’re my own.”
Parenting is mostly bribery . . . and yelling.
“I don’t really mean that. I love them. I kind of hate them, too. It’s complicated.
Maybe this is how Catholics do it. We accept a certain level of unhappiness—like we have an unhappiness equilibrium built into our brains—and then, one day, we drop dead.
“Marriage isn’t easy, Andy,” he says. “You love someone in a specific time and place. But you have no idea what they’ll become. People change. Sometimes, they change so much you hardly even recognize them anymore.”
Maybe this is how all marriages end up—the good ones and the bad ones alike—in a box in a basement.
“Daughters,” he says. “You raise them and watch them grow up, and you love them so much it makes you crazy. Then one day some guy shows up. Maybe he’s nice. Maybe he’s got a good job. Maybe he’s got his shirt tucked in and he calls you sir. But he’s never quite what you’re hoping for. If you have one someday—a daughter, I mean—you’ll know what I’m talking about.”
Sometimes the cards are just stacked against you. Nothing you can do about it.”
I’ve given it some thought, and, seriously, there’s just no way Facebook can be good for you. I’m sure there have been studies, so this probably isn’t some brilliant revelation, but I’ll say it anyway. On the surface, it’s harmless enough, I guess. How bad can it really be with its endless baby posts, food pictures, and beachy foot selfies? But it’s not that simple. Mixed in with all of its silly bullshit, Facebook is the literal manifestation of all our regrets, looping and looping, for free, on our computers and phones. People who should be gone and safely out of our lives forever are there
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Do other sons have to gear up to see their own mother? I’ve been doing it for years, as if seeing her is the equivalent of lifting the heavy end of a piano.
She hands me the wine, and I’m not sure what to do with it, exactly. One option is to pry the cork out with my bare hands and start guzzling it.
“A little boy shouldn’t dress up like a sidekick for Halloween.”
“From here on out, no matter what happens, even if I’m not around to keep drumming it into your head, you’re Batman. Always. Never Robin. Never again. Deal?”
It’s a startling thing to have cross your mind so suddenly. Can you dislike the woman who gave birth to you—who is your reason for being alive? Maybe I do. Maybe everything has led up to this moment, at this table, eating this spaghetti, and I’m going to officially be someone who doesn’t like his mother.
Rich white people have a tendency to land on their feet, historically speaking.”
When you make a threat, you have to see it through. Rules of war.”
“Ms. Parks, did you ever think about just getting your tired ass up and going to the back of the bus?”
After the age of about . . . what, sixteen? We’re all damaged. Every single beautiful, stupid, precious one of us. Damaged, damaged, damaged.”
Are all our parents, collectively, fucked up? Have they always been fucked up, and it just takes us until our own adulthood to figure that out?
“I feel like a neighborhood that has a specific rule about pantslessness needs to reevaluate some things.”
When they ask you to rate your pain between one and ten, say eight—maybe eight and a half. Don’t say ten. It’s embarrassing, and they’ll just think you’re being a pussy.”
“You were my sensitive one,” she says.
You cared about things, though. You always felt things more than he did. I always liked that about you.” “It’s actually a huge pain in the ass,” I say.
In situations like this, I’ve found that it’s best to take nothing, because once you take something you can make a pretty good case for taking everything.
“I like to set the bar really low and then just barely exceed it.”
