Krystal Mitchell > Krystal 's Quotes

“The stark, pedestrian images used by filmmakers (probably out of financial necessity) expressed nothing, symbolically or metaphorically. The only purpose they served was to remind me that a huge chunk of my life is completely over, even though I will probably live 60 more years. There are so many things that will never happen to me again, and I never even noticed when those things stopped occurring. And this does not mean I wish I had my old life back, because I like my new life better; I was just shocked to discover how much of what used to be central to my existence doesn't even matter to me anymore.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

“...This is the arena in which a spiritualized disobedience means most. It doesn't mean a second New Deal, another massive bureaucratic attack on our problems. It doesn't mean taking to the streets, throwing bricks through the window at the Bank of America, or driving a tractor through the local McDonald's. It means living differently. It means taking responsibility for the character of the human world. That's a real confrontation with the problem of value. In short, refusal of the present is a return to what Thoreau and Ruskin called "human fundamentals, valuable things," and it is a movement into the future. This movement into the future is also a powerful expression of that most human spiritual emotion, Hope.
p.124”
― Curtis White, The Spirit of Disobedience: Resisting the Charms of Fake Politics, Mindless Consumption, and the Culture of Total Work

“While it is true that many people simply can't afford to pay more for food, either in money or time or both, many more of us can. After all, just in the last decade or two we've somehow found the time in the day to spend several hours on the internet and the money in the budget not only to pay for broadband service, but to cover a second phone bill and a new monthly bill for television, formerly free. For the majority of Americans, spending more for better food is less a matter of ability than priority. p.187”
― Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

“I took a deep breath, inhaling the musty scent of unbrushed velvet and candle wax. So the room was blood red, dark, and scary. I was here to get yelled at and maybe fired by a hooker in a sari, not sacrificed to Satan on a stone altar. p.250”
― Sarah Katherine Lewis, Indecent: How I Make It and Fake It as a Girl for Hire

“Great hope has no real footing unless one is willing to face into the doom that may also be on the way.
p.207”
― Norman Mailer, The Big Empty: Dialogues on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker & Bad Conscience in America

“Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn't see their thoughts as belonging to them. When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love.

Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy, but now they call this free will.
At least the ancient Greeks were being honest.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby

“Modern man has transformed himself into a commodity; he experiences his life energy as an investment with which he should make the highest profit, considering his position and the situation on the personality market. He is alienated from himself, from his fellow men and from nature. His main aim is profitable exchange of his skills, knowledge, and of himself, his "personality package" with others who are equally intent on a fair and profitable exchange. Life has no goal except the one to move, no principle except the one of fair exchange, no satisfaction except the one to consume.p97.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

“Which on am I?" I drew my left eyebrow in a high, puzzled arch.
"Which what?" Crack reached for her makeup kit. "Bottom or fool?" She pulled out a tiny mirror and put another layer of mascara on her giant fake lashes. She used a special oversized mascara brush for her oversized lashes, carried in a big tube.
"No. Trixie, Twinkie, or Bubbles?" I asked. "Who, in the show?"
She shrugged. "What ever you want, Sugar. Makes no diff to me. A name's just another kind of package. Marketing. Starts the day you're born" p.136”
― Monica Drake, Clown Girl

“I kneeled in front of the E M T chair, in front of the mirror on the medicine cabinet, and wiped the rest of the makeup away. My skin was raw, pink and new. The ambulance had a single round light in the middle of the ceiling. The light cast long shadows under my nose, ears, eyes, and chin, and in the shadows I was young and I was a crone, in the exact same moment. That's it, I thought: life is short. The only value of wated time is knowledge. p.295”
― Monica Drake, Clown Girl

“Only everyone forgets how seldom our memory is accurate. Having more memory is just a way of distorting a greater amount of the past"p.193”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“Imagine the one god himself has reversed his clock and reversed your regrets. Imagine knowing the bone-deep truth that whatever impossibility would make you truly happy has been granted. Imagine knowing you can once again hold your lost lover or your newborn child. Imagine what you feel during those first seconds of knowing. Now, imagine those first seconds last for days on end.
....
Like I said, I'm a chemist. It's all coming back to me.p62”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“You think you can't fix anything until you fix yourselves. Well, let me be the first to tell you, you will never fix yourself. p.32”
― Stephen Elliott, Happy Baby

“Not crazy in a 'let's paint the kitchen bright red!' sort of way. But crazy in a 'gas oven, toothpaste sandwich, I am God' sort of way. Gone were the days when she would stand on the deck lighting lemon-scented candles without then having to eat the wax.p28”
― Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors

“I also need to prepare myself for the inevitability of utter boredom: Very often, single people don't do shit. They do nothing, all night long. They sit in a recliner and watch TV. I've probably watched more television than anyone you've ever met, and I don't even own one. Terrible shows, good shows, Golf tournaments in Cancun. C-SPAN. Hours of Oprah. Law and Order. Lonely people love Law and Order, for whatever reason. They prefer the straight narratives. p60”
― Chuck Klosterman, The Visible Man

“But-when you really think about it-that emotional support only applies to the experience of living in public. We don't have ways to quantify ideas like "amazing" or "successful" or "lovable" without the feedback of an audience. Nobody sits by himself in an empty room and thinks "I'm amazing." It's impossible to imagine how that would work. But being "amazing" is supposed to be what life is about. As a result, the windows of time people spend by themselves become these meaningless experiences that don't really count. It's filler. They're deleted scenes.”
― Chuck Klosterman, The Visible Man

“Modern society is large and complex, with institutions wielding great power over the lives of many. This is why Johnson and Fowler added a dire parting shot in their predictions. Since you are programmed to become increasingly overconfident the less you understand about any given scenario, you can expect to find the most destructive overconfidence in places that are exceedingly complicated and unpredictable.”
― David McRaney

“At some point, if you live long enough, it's probably impossible to avoid seeming crazy.”
― Chuck Klosterman, But What If We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past

“We now have immediate access to all possible facts. Which is almost the same as having none at all.”
― Chuck Klosterman, But What If We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past

“If this were a novel, he might simply be a poorly written character. But there are no poorly written people. Only ones you don't yet understand.”
― Jane Pek, The Verifiers

“There's no such thing as merit separated from biography, he had told me. The only question is whether you're going to let your biography hold you down or help you up.”
― Alafair Burke, All Day and a Night