Jared Neal

“Max's laugh was like a dragnet; it picked up every living laugh within the vicinity and shined a light on it, intensified it, pitched it higher. It was a dare--he dared you not to laugh with him. He dared you to despair. He dared you to insist that there was no dawn, that all there was was darkness, that there was no silver lining, that the heart didn't grow fonder by absence. He dared you to believe you were going to die--when you at that moment knew, just as he did, that you were immortal, you were among the gods.”
― Eve Babitz, Sex and Rage: Advice to Young Ladies Eager for a Good Time: A Novel

“We carry the lives we've imagined as we carry the lives we have, and sometimes a reckoning comes of all the lives we have lost.”
― Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk

“. . I wonder if I’ll ever be able to have what I like or if my tastes are too various to be sustained by one of anything.”
― Eve Babitz, Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, The Flesh, and L.A.

“If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi