Fortune Smiles Quotes

“The truth is, though, that you don't need to die to know what it's like to be a ghost.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“Even they couldn’t dream of a world in which citizens voluntarily carried tracking devices, conducted self-surveillance and reported on”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“To think what the Stasi went through to spy on us. Even they couldn't dream of a world in which citizens voluntarily carried tracking devices, conducted self-surveillance and reported on themselves, morning, noon and night.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“I find a tattered copy of 1984. I open the book and read a little. Of course it is fiction, but the author gets a few things right—the control, the scrutiny, the feeling that nothing can be spontaneous, that the slightest move carries consequences for your future. It evokes a feeling I haven’t experienced in a long time, a sense that, even though you have a great job and house, there is no safe place to turn. The”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“Christian talk, when said in a non-Christian way, scares these Southerners to death.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“Life's full of events - they occur and you adjust, you roll and move on. But at some point you realize some events are actually developments. You realize there's a big plan out there you know nothing about, and a development is a first step in that new direction. Sometimes things feel like big-time developmens but in time you adjust, you find a new way and realize they didn't throw you off course, they didn't change you. They were just events.
The tricky part is telling the difference between the two.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“Old women look all innocent and goody-two-shoes, but then they level some all-knowing eyes on your ass.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“Cancer is the worst way for a fictional wife to die.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“that feeling of being alone and together at the same time.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“Nonc looks out on the city. It looks like one of those end-times Bible paintings where everything is large and impressive, but when you look close, in all the corners, some major shit is befalling people.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“Perennial is the nature of the problems that plague man. Particular is the voice with which they call to each of us.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“Someone needs to tell them that they’re better off without their coffee tables and photo albums. Some person will have to break it to them that their apartments weren’t so great, that losing track of half their relatives is probably for the best. Some shit, though, you got to figure for yourself.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“Nonc’s dad has had cancer before, so the diagnosis isn’t exactly news. There’s something right about it, though. A man spends his life “not expected”—isn’t that how it should end?”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“It’s okay if you can’t make sense of that. I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t grasp it, either. The most vital things we hide even from ourselves.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“With a baby, I’d have something to show for all this. I’d have a reason. At the least, I’d have something to leave behind.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“Since I sleep fully clothed, I’m able to answer right away. By sleeping with your clothes on, you don’t need to climb under the sheets. You don’t need to disturb a perfectly made bed or even fold the bed back into the couch.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“There are those who are born, those who are made, and then there are ones like this guy, the kind who choose.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“She lives in the apartment complex next door and has two daughters, a music blog and a committed relationship with alcohol.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“I do not need to recall the past,” I say. “I am certain of what it was.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“She and I were storytellers. Swapping stories constituted our good times. That’s what sustained our marriage until, I guess, stories weren’t enough.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“the inmates keep their distance and do what inmates always seem to do: affirm and reassure, make the future seem doable.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“Developments can happen right in front of you like that, you don’t even see them.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“Nonc’s pretty okay with the man’s death, but the notion that he’ll never get dressed again, that he’s to die in a gown, seems strange and impossible.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“This feeling of being in proximity to something that’s lost to you, it seems like my whole life right now.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“But you weren’t born,” I tell him. “I wrote an algorithm based on the Linux operating kernel. You’re an open-source search engine married to a dialog bot and a video compiler. The program scrubs the Web and archives a person’s images and videos and data—everything you say, you’ve said before.” For”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“You can barely make out the heavy wooden block of the contortion seat. I run my hands along it's contours, the wood grain smooth and polished from human flesh.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“Nonc is on his side, looking at a boy whose breathing is untroubled for all he’s been through, though there’s a lack of shine in his eyes, as if the little light in him might someday go out. His breath is clean and perfect, though, sweet-smelling.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“son draws comics of Mongolian invasions and the Civil Rights Movement—”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“history teacher allows him to write his reports graphically. (San Francisco!)”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles

“I’m always afraid, as a writer, that the reader is going to quit reading at any paragraph, so I feel like if the language isn’t there, if the dialogue isn’t right, if there isn’t development—if I’m not giving the reader a constant stream of candy, in one form or another—they’re just going to abandon me. That’s my great fear.”
― Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles