Everybody Knows

by Jordan Harper

I have lived in the monster and I know its entrails. —José Martí

keep as much as possible UNSAID.

wear your mask tight.

Nobody talks. But everybody whispers.

Angry joy is her favorite kind. It makes her feel alive.

Don’t worry about the truth. It’s not that the truth isn’t important. It just doesn’t matter.

A lie that is never believed by anyone can still have power—if it gives people permission to do what they want to do anyway.

Have a bloody glove—the objective correlative, the one real thing you can point to that makes the lies feel solid.

Have a bloody glove—the objective correlative, the one real thing you can point to that makes the lies feel solid.

Give them horror or give them heartstrings. Nothing else sticks.

Give them horror or give them heartstrings. Nothing else sticks.

handle your boss the same way you handle a client.

There’s all these invisible walls that keep everybody in line. And if you refuse to see them, they just aren’t there anymore. Once you walk through the walls, they never come back up again.

Somebody somewhere catches lightning in a bottle—and all over town people run out and they buy bottles.

I am a bullet, she decides. And I’m going to build a gun that will shoot me out of here.

some people had bad things done to them, and they just couldn’t wait to push that pain onto someone else.

much of our lives is just stories we tell one another, or ourselves.

She learned how to enjoy being angry—and how to use it so it didn’t burn her up.

when she needed to be, she was cold and hard with a center of fire.

never think too hard about whys.

“Cynicism is not an affectation, it is an affliction,”

No one asks if those things are true. No one cares. The only job is to disconnect power from responsibility.

She runs through the jiujitsu of rejecting a man without hurting his pride. Deflection, spin—protect his ego at all costs. Never let the anger show. Never let the disgust show.

“At the root of every fortune is a crime.

Twenty-four ounces of cold brew and a Spam musubi croissant—the breakfast of champions.

you only smell the rot if you get up close.

know when to be yourself, know when to be someone else.

“There’s no such thing as signs. We live in a cold and godless universe.”

It is terrible but it shines brilliantly. The kind of fear that makes you feel alive, and maybe will keep you that way.

Everybody talks about how actresses are crazy. Nobody talks about how they got that way.

Here is this gorgeous world you were given, you stupid little girl. Look what you all started with.

producers and powerful people don’t wear suits anymore. Looking like shit is a power move—it shows you don’t have to pretend to care what other people think.

You want a man’s soul, you got to be both God and devil for them.

“The lie we tell ourselves is that anything other than power is power. Good intentions aren’t power. Pretty words aren’t power. Lies aren’t power either—it’s how loud you can broadcast them.”

‘It’s not that the truth isn’t important. It just doesn’t matter.’”

What else do you think happens when you fuck with the gods?

You know the difference between a million and a billion? A million seconds is eleven days. A billion seconds is thirty-two years.

His body, UNSAID: Someday you’re going to die. His body, UNSAID: So what are you going to do until then? The only answer he has is, Just try to make it until tomorrow.

We all think that the face we show the world is a mask, and the one we carry deep inside ourselves is the real us. But what if it’s the other way around? What if you are what you do, not how you feel about it?”

Find your place where you can eat and live and be grateful for it.

Never fuck with the gods. It don’t end well.

“I mean, fuck cops. They just work for rich people or themselves.”

“Boys always think everything’s so delicate and they’re so strong, but really it’s the other way.

It is the golden hour and everything around them glows with a secret light. All this obscene beauty everywhere she looks.

“You’ve got to learn what you can change and make peace with what you can’t.”