Stephen Florida Quotes

“I have good news and bad news! The bad news is that the abyss and the void are all the same thing and it is monumental and everywhere. The good news is you can lie still in your bed while the cursed and the unskinned walk around in it and not feel a thing.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida

“You're only who you really are when you're doing what you really want. I am so much myself, I could never be anyone else.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida

“When you get older, I guess you learn the importance of flowers and good food and old friends. That’s called settling down. But I don’t need to be old to know that to look back and realize you didn’t push yourself for something you loved is the greatest regret you can have.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida: A Novel

“Pigeons mate for life!” Kryger yells, which isn’t true, if you’ve ever seen a pigeon you know that’s not true, but that makes me think of the opposite of that, which is lions, who fuck for fun, and then humans, who fuck for a lot more complicated reasons.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida: A Novel

“Melancholy is a term I learned about in my reading and I’ve discovered it can be wildly addictive to nurse one’s own melancholy, needless to say.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida: A Novel

“Eventually I realized, while watching the cat turn its ears and listen and watch out the window and clean itself five times a day, that attention was its own kind of existence.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida

“More and more things keep happening to me. Insignificant things and significant things and boring things and sacred things and terrible things and nice things and strange things. They disguise themselves as new events but really I know what they are, they're ancient events that have happened before and they've just run to the back of the line to wait their turn again.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida

“I had never guessed that wanting one thing for so long, wanting it at the cost of everything else, I never would’ve guessed that finally getting my hands on it could not feel really any different than how it felt all along, how it didn’t push out the boredom and the terror in the rooms, in every room I’ve ever spent time in.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida

“You lock yourselves in the room where you sleep with the person you love. This is the most intimate thing you can do with this person.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida

“And though Paul Kryger wishes me to die, wishes me to leave Oregsburg and never come back so he can be the 133, he’ll never get it because he doesn’t want it as bad as me, and all I would like to tell him is he would be better if he wasn’t so angry, that is, if he wasn’t so stupid on top of being so angry, but I don’t tell him this. I don’t tell him anything. I feel no pity for Paul Kryger or Paul Kryger’s future bride and unborn grandchildren, who surely will be bastards, who are all going to be denied the story that Paul Kryger was the 133. I will make sure that story never exists. I will take something away from him so that he’ll never have it.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida

“Life and the human condition are the exact same thing and it makes no difference, the design is sadness, gravitational and old, except the few times it hiccups and it's not.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida

“Closure and reason are impossible. Understanding, on the other hand, is the best you can hope for.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida: A Novel

“The end is the point of wanting something in the first place, isn’t it?”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida: A Novel

“When you try to talk to God you don’t get him, instead you just get a sniveling little assistant who says he’ll relay your question and who goes around the corner for thirty seconds and reports back what he says God whispered in his ear, but you know that’s not what he’s done, there’s no one around the corner, he just stood there and counted off a reasonable time. As you know, that’s what religion is.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida

“And still, these silly classes I took make up what turns out to be my higher education. It will always be a part of what I am, things happen and then fall away, it's no less permanent than what happens in a wrestling match. I have to live with all of it. And lately, twenty one years of living with things has begun to wear thin. Eighteen years of living with it, then graduating to three more years of living with it, where all you do is live with it. I'm up to my neck in it, I'm stuck with all this history and it never leaves me alone. It's enough to make you imagine what could have been different, to make you turn over small thoughts about whether what you are is what you should be, whether you've made the correct choice. I just need one thing to live with that I want to live with. That'll be enough.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida

“I wait in these chambers of dissatisfaction like a frustrated prince.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida

“I speak selectively, afraid I'm going to topple the thing Mary Beth is allowing to happen between us, which so far has included mouth affection and body caresses on top of her comforter. We're still in the phase where you try to make the other person think you don't have flaws or take dumps.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida

“Różnica między dorosłymi a dziećmi polega na tym, że dorośli mają mnóstwo problemów, a dzieci tylko jeden, największy”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida

“Everyone’s unfortunately born with a memory. But this is what I tell him if I sense he’s sick over it: if you turn your thoughts over to the nothingness of what’s here, nothing land, nothing people, nothing houses, nothing lakes, nothing cold in nothing bones, you can squeeze your happiness to a pinpoint—you are here to wrestle other men like your oldest enemies, leave them damaged or worse on the mat, until you’re by yourself.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida: A Novel

“The difference between children and adults is: adults have lots of problems and the young have one big problem.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida

“no friendship worth anything is logical to the outside world,”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida

“Class is a hobby. They cut you all this slack, they keep cutting it year after year. This walking back and forth to buildings, remembering facts and opinions temporarily just to spit them back out and forget forever, it’s what passes for occupation until a match.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida