Kimberli Berberian > Kimberli's Quotes

“Life always kills you in the end, but first it prevents you from getting what you want.”
― Douglas Coupland, The Gum Thief

“Around the outside of the room other beautiful women wearing little or nothing at all flitted between the infatuated, intoxicated men, sometimes luring them away for a private dance. The men would follow obediently, weighed down by lust and credit cards.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Zombie Room

“The longer you went without speaking, the harder it gets to break the silence.”
― Richard Bachman, The Long Walk

“Making lots of money--it's not that hard, you know. It's overestimated. Making lots of money is a breeze. You watch. ch. 1, p. 23 in Penguin paperback”
― Martin Amis (Author), Money

“Without access to true chaos, we'll never have true peace. Unless everything can get worse, it won't get any better.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing but I had done another. And so?”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“It may not be nice to be good, 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“... and the sun, a planet on fire, gradually rises over Manhattan, another sunrise, and soon the night turns into day so fast its like some kind of optical illusion ...”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“It was like falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool full of mermaids.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

“Put a higher value on yourself. Being hyper-realistic about everything is too simple a get-out.”
― J.G. Ballard, Cocaine Nights

“I find waiting unbearable because it makes me passive and negates me. I hate being nothing.”
― Kathy Acker, Eurydice in the Underworld

“Inside skull vast as outside skull”
― Allen Ginsberg, Cosmopolitan Greetings

“I couldn't imagine myself doing it anymore. It was part of my life that had ended for me, and here was my chance to set out on a fresh course”
― Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things

“One flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo's nest.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“I knew what he felt. The huge buoyant air sack of love that filled his body had just exploded and the collapse was devastating.”
― Katherine Dunn

“...I became aware of the world's tenderness, the profound beneficence of all that surrounded me, the blissful bond between me and all of creation, and I realized that the joy I sought in you was not only secreted within you, but breathed around me everywhere, in the speeding street sounds, in the hem of a comically lifted skirt, in the metallic yet tender drone of the wind, in the autumn clouds bloated with rain. I realized that the world does not represent a struggle at all, or a predaceous sequence of chance events, but the shimmering bliss, beneficent trepidation, a gift bestowed upon us and unappreciated.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“There is an unfair responsibility that comes with being an only child - you grow up knowing you aren't allowed to disappoint, you're not even allowed to die.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“Anyway—because we are readers, we don't have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next—and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis—at any time of night or day.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“Wenn die Intelligenten einen schlechten Charakter haben, so zeigt sich das, und wenn sie keinen schlechten Charakter haben, dann sind sie so leicht auszurechnen wie Quadratwurzeln.”
― Richard Bachman, Rage

“Will you call me before Christmas?' she asks.
Maybe.' I pull on my vest, wondering why I even came here in the first place.
You've still got my number, don't you?' She reaches for a pad and begins to write it down.
Yeah, Blair. I've got your number. I'll get in touch.'
I button up my jeans and turn to leave.
Clay?'
Yeah, Blair.'
If I don't see you before Christmas,' she stops. 'Have a good one.'
I look at her a moment. 'Hey, you too.'
She picks up the stuffed black cat and strokes its head.
I step out the door and start to close it.
Clay?' she whispers loudly.
I stop but don't turn around.'Yeah?'
Nothing.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero

“I'm more of a warrior than you'll ever be. I believe in the class war. I believe in the battle of the sexes. I believe in my tribe. I believe in the righteous, intelligent clued-up section of the working classes against the brain-dead moronic masses as well as the mediocre, soulless bourgeoisie.”
― Irvine Welsh, Porno

“your handwriting. the way you walk. which china pattern you choose. it's all giving you away. everything you do shows your hand. everything is a self portrait. everything is a diary.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“Hey, nit squat! These are written by norms to scare norms. And do you know what the monsters and demons and rancid spirits are? Us, that’s what. You and me. We are the things that come to the norms in nightmares. The thing that lurks in the bell tower and bites out the throats of the choirboys—that’s you, Oly. And the thing in the closet that makes the babies scream in the dark before it sucks their last breath—that’s me. And the rustling in the brush and the strange piping cries that chill the spine on a deserted road at twilight—that’s the twins singing practice scales while they look for berries.
Don't shake your head at me! These books teach me a lot. They don't scare me because they're about me. Turn the page.”
― Katherine Dunn, Geek Love

“The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets.”
― Poppy Z. Brite

“Down the hall came the wife. She was glorious, burning. She didn't know yet that her husband was dead. We knew. That's what gave her such power over us. The doctor took her into a room with a desk at the end of the hall, and from under the closed door a slab of brilliance radiated as if, by some stupendous process, diamonds were being incinerated in there. What a pair of lungs! She shrieked as I imagined an eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere.”
― Denis Johnson

“The simplest questions are the most difficult.”
― William S. Burroughs, With William Burroughs: A Report From The Bunker

“When you love somebody, you don't just give up on them when they do bad things. You fight for them.”
― Kelly Braffet, Save Yourself

“I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.”
― Georges Bataille, Violent Silence: Celebrating Georges Bataille

“No way," he said, shaking his head, shaking the image of Lise, bare-legged, her skirt hitched high, from his thoughts. "Lise, she’s a sister to me."

"Oh," she said, fingertips making circles just above the waist of her skirt. Wider and wider circles.

"A sister," he repeated. He looked at her. There was something scratching again, in the corner above his eye, like those metal probes at the dentist clawing at your teeth.”
― Megan Abbott, The Fever

“I had fallen in love. What I mean is: I had begun to recognize, to isolate the signs of one of those from the others, in fact I waited for these signs I had begun to recognize, I sought them, responded to those signs I awaited with other signs I made myself, or rather it was I who aroused them, these signs from her, which I answered with other signs of my own . . . ”
― Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics