Insomniac City Quotes

“I don’t so much fear death as I do wasting life.” Oliver Sacks”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“I suppose it’s a cliché to say you’re glad to be alive, that life is short, but to say you’re glad to be not dead requires a specific intimacy with loss that comes only with age or deep experience. One has to know not simply what dying is like, but to know death itself, in all its absoluteness. After all, there are many ways to die—peacefully, violently, suddenly, slowly, happily, unhappily, too soon. But to be dead—one either is or isn’t. The same cannot be said of aliveness, of which there are countless degrees. One can be alive but half-asleep or half-noticing as the years fly, no matter how fully oxygenated the blood and brain or how steadily the heart beats. Fortunately, this is a reversible condition. One can learn to be alert to the extraordinary and press pause—to memorize moments of the everyday.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“I've lived in New York long enough to understand why some people hate it here: the crowds, the noise, the traffic, the expense, the rents; the messed-up sidewalks and pothole-pocked streets; the weather that brings hurricanes named after girls that break your heart and take away everything.
It requires a certain kind of unconditional love to love living here. But New York repays you in time in memorable encounters, at the very least. Just remember: ask first, don't grab, be fair, say please and thank you- even if you don't get something back right away. You will.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“2-1-10:
A languid Sunday, afternoon turned into evening, evening into night, night into morning.
'I just want to enjoy your nextness and nearness,' O says.
He puts his ear to my chest and listens to my heart and counts the beats.
'Sixty-two,' he says with a satisfied smile, and I can't imagine anything more intimate.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“O: 'The most we can do is to write - intelligently, creatively, critically, evocatively - about what it is like living in the world at this time”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“Every car on every train on every line holds a surprise, a random sampling of humanity brought together in a confined space for a minute or two - a living Rubik's Cube.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“One can be alive but half-asleep or half-noticing as the years fly, no matter how fully oxygenated the blood and brain or how steadily the heart beats. Fortunately, this is a reversible condition. One can learn to be alert to the extraordinary and press pause—to memorize moments of the everyday.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“In the middle of the night: "Wouldn't it be nice if we could dream together?" O whispers.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“I've suddenly realized what you mean to me: You create the need which you fill, the hunger you sate.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“I have come to believe that kindness is repaid in unexpected ways and that if you are lonely or bone-tired or blue, you need only come down from your perch and step outside. New York—which is to say, New Yorkers—will take care of you.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“But taking wrong trains, encountering unexpected delays, and suffering occasional mechanical breakdowns are inevitable to any journey really worth taking. One learns to get oneself turned around and headed the right way.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“To be a New Yorker is to be away from the city and feel like you are missing something”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“By 'stay,' do you mean forever?" I mean to ask but don't. Stay till I die? Till I am too old to take care of myself, like my father?
"For now." is my answer, but I don't know, not really. If moving to New York at age forty-eight taught me anything, it is that I am capable of starting over in a new place. And yet, the thought of leaving it, of knowing how much I would miss, is too painful to contemplate.
I remember how Wendy once told me she loved New York so much she couldn't bear the thought of it going on without her. It seemed like both the saddest and the most romantic thing one could possibly say—sad because New York can never return the sentiment, and sad because it's the kind of thing said more often about a romantic love—husband, wife, girlfriend, partner, lover. You can't imagine them going on without you. But they do. We do. Every day, we may wake up and say, What's the point? Why go on? And, there is really only one answer: To be alive.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“12-27-10
Palace Hotel, San Francisco- Over Christmas
In bed, lights out:
O: 'Oh, oh, oh...!'
I: 'What was that for?'
O: 'I found your fifth rib.'
In the middle of the night: 'Wouldn't it be nice if we could dream together?' O whispers.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“I cannot take a subway without marveling at the lottery logic that brings together a random sampling of humanity for one minute or two, testing us for kindness and compatibility. Is that not what civility is?”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“What is the opposite of a perfect storm? That is what this was, one of those rare moments when the world seems to shed all shyness and display every possible permutation of beauty. Oliver said it well as we took up our plates and began heading back downstairs: “I’m glad I’m not dead.” This came out rather loudly, as he is a bit deaf. Even so, he looked surprised by his own utterance, as if it were something he was feeling but didn’t really mean to say aloud—a thought turned into an exclamation. “I’m glad you’re not dead, too,” said a neighbor gaily, taking up the refrain. “I’m glad we’re all not dead,” said another. There followed a spontaneous raising of glasses on the rooftop, a toast to the setting sun, a toast to us.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“But if pressed, I’d have to say that what I love most about the subways of New York is what they do not do. One may spend a lifetime looking back—whether regretfully or wistfully, with shame or fondness or sorrow—and thinking how, given the chance, things might have been done differently. But when you enter a subway car and the doors close, you have no choice but to give yourself over to where it is headed. The subway only goes one way: forward.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“Wouldn't it be nice if there weree a planet where the sound of rain falling is like Bach?" he says.
"Yes, Planet Bach," I respond.
He smiles -"Yes", he murmurs- picturing it, hearing it.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“Sad, shocking, horrible, yes," underlining each word, "but..."

(Oliver often said that but was his favorite word, a kind of etymological flip of the coin, for it allowed consideration of both sides of an argument, a topic, as well as a kind of looking-at-the-bright-side that was as much a part of his nature as his diffidence and indecisiveness.)”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“O: 'Are you conscious of your thoughts before language embodies them?”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“I've come to believe that a good cry is like a car wash for the soul”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“Take each day as it comes, don’t overthink it.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“I: “Such a lovely word—why triboluminescence?” O: “I like lightbulbs.” This didn’t seem to answer my question but I liked it anyway.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“If New York was a patient, it would be diagnosed with agrypnia excitata, a rare genetic condition characterized by insomnia, nervous energy, constant twitching, and dream enactment - an apt description of a city that never sleeps, a place where one comes to reinvent himself”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“The most we can do is to write—intelligently, creatively, critically, evocatively—about what it is like living in the world at this time.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“Reckon not upon long life: think every day the last, and live always beyond thy account. He that so often surviveth his Expectation lives many Lives, and will scarce complain of the shortness of his days. Time past is gone like a Shadow; make time to come present—”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“I suppose it’s a cliché to say you’re glad to be alive, that life is short, but to say you’re glad to be not dead requires a specific intimacy with loss that comes only with age or deep experience. One has to know not simply what dying is like, but to know death itself, in all its absoluteness.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“10-16-13
I, soaking in the bath, O on the toilet, talking, talking about what he's been thinking and writing- short personal pieces, a memoir perhaps. He had brought with him two pillows to sit on and a very large red apple. He opens his mouth wide and takes a gigantic bite. I watch him chewing for quite a while. After he finishes, 'Bite me off a piece', I say. He does so, dislodges the apple from his mouth, and puts the piece in my mouth. We keep talking. I add more hot water. Every other bite, he gives to me.
There is a quiet moment, and then, seemingly apropos of nothing, O says: 'I am glad to be on planet Earth with you. It would be so much lonelier otherwise.'
I reach for his hand and hold it,
'I, too,' I say.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“I learned that not only had he never been in a relationship, he had also never came out publicly as a gay man. But in a way, he'd had no reason to do so- he hadn't had sex in three-and-a-half decades, he told me. At first, I did not believe him; such a monk like existence- devoted solely to work, reading, writing, thinking- seemed at once awe-inspiring and inconceivable. He was without a doubt the most unusual person I had ever known, and before long I found myself not just falling in love with O; it was something more, something I had never experienced before. I adored him.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“everything. It requires a certain kind of unconditional love to love living here. But New York repays you in time in memorable encounters, at the very least. Just remember: Ask first, don’t grab, be fair, say please and thank you, always say thank you—even if you don’t get something back right away. You will.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me