These Things Happen Quotes

“This is us, then, at night. Two men, slowly crumbling, minding our business in the bed we flip four times a year to extend its life. I've got my side, Kenny's got his, and from time to time we meet in the middle to do what Men Like That (like us) do in a bed; it's not always hot, not after all this time, but it's reassuring. Mostly, though, we sleep. We like to. We work hard. We need it.”
― Richard Kramer, These Things Happen

“He is grateful to the train, and sees it as a tame beast, with a soul; he is, after all, a city boy. And, also... does anything really significant ever happen in a cab? Taxis, unlike trains just aren't all that interested in you.”
― Richard Kramer, These Things Happen

“But that IS New York! Boxes on boxes. Because when you're here, you - give up space. Right? For house seats... in the Theater of Life!”
― Richard Kramer, These Things Happen

“I remember our Saturdays thirty years ago, when we'd meet to slip into the second acts of flops. Times Square was still disgusting then, and fabulous; its true squalor may have already started to fade, but there was enough left to get the idea. People were still furtive and wore hats. I miss hats and furtiveness ; maybe they'll return...”
― Richard Kramer, These Things Happen

“That's a New York problem:; everyone here always knows what you're talking about. They've heard the joke, tried the recipe. It gets exhausting, drowning at the same time you're running in place.”
― Richard Kramer, These Things Happen

“A lot can happen in a day, sometimes. Not every day, of course. Most have one event, and that's if you're lucky.”
― Richard Kramer, These Things Happen

“They each look down now, although not yet at each other. Cabs, whistles, bullets; buses, screams, small sobs; people singing, sighing, pleading with dogs to shit; from the long streets the clang of textures bumping into lampposts; the soft fall onto the ground, like leaves, of seven thousand flyers bearing news of who was out for tonight's performance; the audible thoughts of select citizens, taxpayers, permanent residents. Today I worked; I loved; I tried.”
― Richard Kramer, These Things Happen

“If anyone were ever to ask George why he doesn't fear the things most people do, he would see, perhaps, that yes; it has to have been the road; it was where he formed his just-the-next-place philosophy, on buses smelling of French fries, old gum, sleeping people who know they will never rise higher than this; buses bearing him to two nights here, three there; the next places much the same as the places before; the same scrappy museum, rich lady's garden, the same depressed downtown.”
― Richard Kramer, These Things Happen

“Me and Theo feel, personally--this is the kind of stuff we talk about--that lying is most interesting as an action when you don't actually have the need to lie. Does that make any sense? Because it allows you to find out what truth, personally, is for you. Because there have to be more categories, quite frankly, than truth or untruth. Which is to say: lies.”
― Richard Kramer, These Things Happen

“There's a bench, worn smooth by decades of widows and nannies; I sit, and wonder if he will, if he'll remember it was ours for years, for the half hour most nights before dinner. We'd come down, with some leaky dog or other, and discuss the details of our days; he never didn't trust me; I always felt honored by that.”
― Richard Kramer, These Things Happen

“Because how do you tell a woman in a kitchen the tale of her being and self, when she hates the Internet because it makes research too easy, helps others dig deep and deeper into who they are, when she's someone who can meet parts of herself she hates, as she did today, and still keep enough of the rest of herself in mind? She'll find out on her own, I'm sure of it; she's a brave girl; I am surrounded by brave people.”
― Richard Kramer, These Things Happen

“Ah. We are men, of an age, in a city that both is much like New York and is New York, so this question must mean when did I know I was (whisper) (you know) (gay). How can we have been friends for so long, I wonder, and never have gotten to this? This used to be the question, back in the great dead then, in the days before knowledge had turned into information. Forever; that was an answer. Or sophomore year.”
― Richard Kramer, These Things Happen

“I didn't plan it; in a way, it seems, it planned me. I won, and I was making my acceptance speech, and then the words were there, all excited, like kids going off to camp. I. Am. Gay.”
― Richard Kramer, These Things Happen

“It seems some people, like George, are just like that, lucky people with stories just circling them like birds, ready to float down for a perch on an outstretched finger.”
― Richard Kramer, These Things Happen

“How many words are spoken in New York every day, just in Manhattan alone, say? And how many are really heard? Seventeen, maybe. On a good day.”
― Richard Kramer, These Things Happen

“I'm always working, like everyone I know, to seem more amazing and well-rounded and interesting than I actually am, or could ever be. The weird part is: no one's every actually said that to any of us. It's more like it's on all our devices, stuffed forever into all of our Clouds; like prune paste in hamentaschen…”
― Richard Kramer, These Things Happen