The Bad Angel Brothers Quotes

“Snobs are full of bullying opinions, but snobs are not strong. They’re insecure and unreliable, they’re usually liars. Snobs will agree to anything, no matter how implausible, as long as it gives them an advantage, something extravagant to boast about; and because they can be tempted that way, they’re easily manipulated. Snobs are less substantial than they appear. And yet, with their crass ambition, pathetic as they are, they can still succeed in their wish to hurt your feelings, they can inflict pain, they can cause unhappiness.”
― Paul Theroux, The Bad Angel Brothers

“griping in my guts, he was not human. He was a sinister sound that wouldn’t go away, a sickness infecting my body, weakening me and keeping me awake. He was flat and dark, shadowy, disembodied most of the time. I imagined him two-dimensional, like a tick fastened to my flesh, wishing to be engorged, fattened on my blood.”
― Paul Theroux, The Bad Angel Brothers

“Frank was malign in a peculiar way—instead of disgustedly rejecting me—the typical ghosting a hater showed in loathing—he stewed in his hatred, he refused to leave me alone, he found strategies for clinging, and he insisted on remaining close to me, in a kind of foul intimacy, being a brother to go on torturing me. He showed me that the ultimate in hatred is not rejection; it is the refusal to let go. It was hatred as haunting.”
― Paul Theroux, The Bad Angel Brothers

“Now I was home alone, feeling virtuous, relieved to be on the phone to my wife, speaking with gusto about how grateful I was to be married to her, gushing as only an adulterer can gush to the woman he has recently deceived.”
― Paul Theroux, The Bad Angel Brothers

“a wrong one, and didn’t stumble, and kept going, growing, or diminishing, but certainly becoming someone different. That’s how it was with me.”
― Paul Theroux, The Bad Angel Brothers

“The great changes in our lives are rarely well-planned capers or dramatic decisions, knee-deep in the Rubicon, plunging forward. They’re usually bumbling deviations, barely perceptible at the outset. It’s not an apparent choice. You find yourself on a path, you wander aimlessly, and after a while you’re awakened to its widening, and its differences. Then it’s too late to turn back, or too much trouble, because you’d have to explain too much. It’s more comfortable to drift, and you console yourself by claiming this was a good move. Maybe it was. Or maybe it was a mistake. But it all happened simply: way back, you took a turn, possibly”
― Paul Theroux, The Bad Angel Brothers

“The paradox of being helped, in something you can very easily do yourself, is that the help becomes so convenient you lose the ability to act alone, and you become fussed and futile without it—infantilized. This was an imperative with Frank: to insinuate himself so deeply in someone’s affairs that he became indispensable.”
― Paul Theroux, The Bad Angel Brothers

“Much worse than his malice, more serious than his bullying, was Frank’s kindness. I don’t say “apparent kindness,” because I could seldom separate the real thing from the pretense. He knew how to be generous and tender, he was able to touch a nerve and evoke a need; to inspire confidences, to be the soul of kindness. That was his most Luciferian trait.”
― Paul Theroux, The Bad Angel Brothers

“I was twenty-six and I didn’t know what I realized later, that competitive businesses are always on the lookout for young and ambitious workers, eager to learn, able to take orders, even-tempered and undemanding—no family, no mortgage, adaptable, portable, loyal, grateful, who will work for much less money than someone older, to build a résumé and make a reputation.”
― Paul Theroux, The Bad Angel Brothers

“animal in a purified state of utter solitude. Even if I found no gold I would have the satisfaction that I’d found contentment.”
― Paul Theroux, The Bad Angel Brothers

“Out of touch, on my own, surrounded by fractured rock, and scrub and sand, in a valley as hot and bleak as a crucible, I began to understand who I was and what I wanted. No one interrupted me or asked me questions. I lived without pretension. I was an”
― Paul Theroux, The Bad Angel Brothers

“My great discovery was: freedom is not expensive.”
― Paul Theroux, The Bad Angel Brothers

“There is one true kind of loving—heartfelt, unselfish, pure in heart, life-affirming; but there are many vivid versions of hatred. The hatred that makes your enemy abandon you is nothing compared to the hatred that impels this monster never to leave you alone, infecting you like a virus, sickening you and seeming to gloat.”
― Paul Theroux, The Bad Angel Brothers

“A high school nickname is forever, and it annoyingly defines you when you’re still living in your hometown.”
― Paul Theroux, The Bad Angel Brothers

“I came to see that for him, for most sociopaths, he had no memory—took no responsibility for anything he’d said or done—had no past, no history, it never happened. Memory is essential to conscience; he had no conscience.”
― Paul Theroux, The Bad Angel Brothers