The Infinite Blacktop Quotes

“I think it’s your civic obligation to be utterly fucking furious about politics.”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“Later, as life wore on, I would realize that most people think everyone hates them. The truth is worse; for most people, no one is thinking of them at all.”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“He realized that you can try as hard as you want to escape who you are, but eventually, you realize there is no escape. There’s nowhere to run, and nothing to run to. Nothing ever really changes. The state of life on earth is exactly what it is, and the only chance of a happy life is accepting that. Accepting life as it is. And knowing that there is no escape. And that’s the only freedom he’s ever been able to find.”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“Sometimes the past comes up on us like a ghost. Sometimes life is like a haunted house. But there’s no way to leave. You just have to make your peace with the ghosts.”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“Now men, men never really see women at all. The more famous you are, the less they see you. That’s one thing I know. You can spend a lifetime around men without them ever really seeing you.” Carol was starting to get drunk, which was not a bad thing for an investigation or, I figured, her day. “What do they see?” I asked. “They see one of two things,” Carol said, with no malice. “They see someone who can solve all their problems—someone who can make their dick hard, make them rich, make them grow their hair back. Or they see the mean old lady standing in between them and all of that. The witch. That’s me. You don’t believe me now, but wait until you’re my age. You will. You’ll see how fast you change from one to the other. And Ann, Ann didn’t fit into either category, and that made people uncomfortable. And it made her very uncomfortable, too, I think—always being looked at, never being seen.”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“And I knew that who I was was not entirely dependent on my results. I am who I am because of who I am, not because of the commodities I generate or even the, you know, the sacred objects that I generate. I am not my results. I am my process.”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“But age isn’t just time passing. It’s time breaking you—your will, your heart, your beliefs.”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“But life as herself, inhabiting her own body and mind, which had also seemed so mysterious and elusive, was nothing but another locked room. There was no way in or out. Even if you could escape, you’d be in another locked room: this fucked-up world, which you could get out of easily enough, but never get back into (as far as she knew) once you left.”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“So the guru goes up to the hot dog guy. Hot dog guy says, ‘What can I get you?’
“And the guru says, ‘Make me one. With everything.’ ”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“We solved every case we found. But we still couldn’t seem to solve the biggest mystery we had: why no one cared about our cases,”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“mystery is like a termite: even if you don’t know it’s there, it creates holes in your foundation, leaving you off-kilter and unsupported, never understanding why your house is such a frightening and confusing place to be.”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“There was an energy to Los Angeles that was sharp and would cut you if you didn’t recognize it. Every grain of sand in the beaches and desert buried under the city was a little razor, ready and willing to wound.”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“I ignored the bit about him being hard to love, which described everyone, ever. Hard to love was a pretty good definition of humanity in general.”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“Your assumptions,” Silette wrote, “are your worst enemies. Throw away your clever thoughts. Let the rest of the world drown in lies. Rest on the life raft of truth.”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“The older I get, the less I understand. I don't know what it would mean to be really good. I think sometimes we get caught up in trying to tell the world something about ourselves. Maybe even trying to tell ourselves about ourselves, you know, trying to keep up an idea of ourselves that we can live with. But I think something we need to stop worrying about all that and just do something. Just look for ways to help and then just try to help. Water a plant. Feed an animal. Help the people you see every day. We don't have to make some big controversy over it, or get wrapped up in some drama. We make things so complicated. All we have to do is just be a little bit better than we are, and keep heading that way. It doesn't have to feel good. You don't have to like it. And you can have your doubts about it, too. You just have to do it.”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“People work all their life to get recognized,” Linda said. “What they don’t realize is that once they get recognized, they’re not themselves anymore. Not in public. Not to anyone else. They’re someone else. And that’s what people recognize. That’s who everyone falls in love with. That’s who they want. People like Ann are constantly changing. But the world wants just that one incarnation of them, over and over again.” We didn’t say anything for a moment. Two hummingbirds fought a few feet from us. I thought about how much I wanted to enjoy the sunshine and the hummingbirds and the flowers. Enjoying life as it unfolded was always hard. Since Constance died it seemed physically impossible. It was all just a long, infinite, blacktop of things you’d regret not enjoying later. CHAPTER 9 THE CASE OF THE INFINITE BLACKTOP Las Vegas, 2011 Las Vegas was eighty-five degrees and as dry as the desert it was but inside Nero’s Inferno the air was cool and dark and almost damp, more like a cave than a royal domain. I”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“And Merritt, I saw now, had figured out the ultimate puzzle—how to live forever. How to leave enough of yourself behind, even if it was scattered in little pieces, that your presence on the earth was no longer temporary, but permanent.”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“Psalm 52:3: “You love evil rather than good, and falsehood rather than truth.”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what I wanted either. I wanted to solve the mystery of the bee. I wanted Adam to like me. I wanted Adam to be Constance. I wanted to be happy, or at least to envision what happiness might look like. I wanted to be the best detective in the world. I wanted to take every ounce of pain I had ever felt and condense it and transform it into something terrible and beautiful and throw it back to the world and say Now do you see how wrong you were? Don’t you fucking see it?”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what I wanted either. I wanted to solve the mystery of the bee. I wanted Adam to like me. I wanted Adam to be Constance. I wanted to be happy, or at least to envision what happiness might look like. I wanted to be the best detective in the world. I wanted to take every ounce of pain I had ever t and condense it and transform it into something terrible and beautiful and throw it back to the world and say Now do you see how wrong you were? Don’t you fucking see it?”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

“I didn’t tell her I’d been there. I didn’t tell her I was still there. I didn’t tell her: I hate myself that much every day. I didn’t tell her: the only thing that saved me is gone and never coming back. I didn’t tell her: I will be there again, and I will be there so often I will come to believe it’s my natural habitat.”
― Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop