Jay > Jay's Quotes

“People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know _about_ you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are. What they do is they fill in with their own feelings and opinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook. No-one can touch you unless you yourself want them to.”
― Per Petterson, Out Stealing Horses

“But when we experience pain or trauma, we’re acutely aware that something is wrong. You want answers. “What is this? How do I get rid of this? Why is this happening to me? I don’t want this.” That’s why so much art, and music, in particular, becomes a great commiserating balm for pain. Joy doesn’t need to be audited. We’re just grateful to have had it at all. But pain, goddammit, we demand to know Who’s responsible for this?”
― Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

“People are good or half good or a quarter good, and it changes all the time- but even on the best day nobody's perfect.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“Why had this penguin come to mean so much? That, at least, is easy to explain. Anybody who suddenly moves far from family and friends and the pets they love, feels a .. vulnerable emptiness. It is inevitable; even despite the sensational compensation. Nature upholds a vacuum and it was into this space that Juan Salvador rushed. At first, he occupied it, and then he filled and dominated it. It was not big enough for him, and so he stretched it; expanded it beyond the measure. I didn't think about it, it just happened; and then, he was gone. Of course, time moves on and new family and friends and pets jostle for position in our heart, but the vacancy left by previous occupants never fills. We keep our loved ones alive throughout our memory, our conversations and our stories, but we don't necessarily choose to reveal how much they really meant. We don't have to. Anybody who lost a pet knows.”
― Tom Michell, The Penguin Lessons