from HOTEL AMERIKA
In the long run there is only the short run.
Maybe what interests us in the mirror is not ourselves but that person
who looks so interested in us.
Some are always naked, some never.
Historij repeats itself is roughly equivalent to Language repeats itself. And having heard all the words doesn’t make it any easier to know
what to say.
The frog eats flies but grows no wings.
I’m blissfully solitary for a few minutes, and then who shows up but
myself?
Even words are beyond words.
The cycle of wars will end when the vanquished are properly grateful.
There’s no reason for my discontent, but I’m sure I’ll find one.
Zeal strikes not from conviction but in order to believe.
Not till I walk out of the sea of noise into the night do I know I’m
drunk.
His anger is a mine happy to be stepped on.
Gods, too, get promoted to their level of incompetence.
She thinks her frenzy is a victimless crime.
When the Devil offers his restructured deal— Everything you could possibly wish for, yes, even more wishes! —just remember that the best things in your life are things you would not have known exactly
how to wish for.
My resentment is a child who needs attention. I’m out of here, he
says. Don’t let me go.
You tiy to take it back, but the tape in reverse is unintelligible.
Suffering builds character? Or a mind tensed for more suffering that understands every touch as a blow.
Hatred, like love, thrives on silly details.
Credit says I may not have to pay it back. After all, I am really borrowing from my future self, and he is kind.
Let’s not bum that bridge till we cross it.
Labor must be the opposite of laughter since the least funny thing is someone working hard to be funny.
Useless to try to do what the world tells you to, since what it really wants is something better than it knows how to say.
Democracy and individualism are inconsistent: everyone else is
wrong.
That’s a great point. Meaning I have already thought of it and will
now elaborate.
Imperishable fame is one of the oldest phrases in language, and the first justification for literature. Did it wink out forever in my lifetime? Or is it just that it was always an idea of the young, who needed to believe that the work ahead of them would last forever? An idea more credible in the millennia when few lived long enough to see greatness forgotten, or to forget it themselves.
What they call creativity is just an accident we leam how to keep
having.
Comforting how few of the stupidest things I’ve said anyone seems to remember. Apparently only I knew enough about what I was really thinking to know how monumentally stupid they really were.
The self does not exist. But just try to change it.
He was so slow to speak that even silence put words in his mouth.
Realism exposes itself by caring a little too much that you think it’s
real.
When the power goes off, the silence wakes me.
It’s a baseball truism that left-handed hitters like the ball low. That’s because the right hemisphere is best at tracking moving objects and it controls the left visual field of both eyes. Given the tilt of a lefty batter’s head, the left visual fields are lower than the right. Where else was I going to publish this theory?
I’m far less likely to say That’s too young for me than I’m too old for that, maybe hoping someone will tell me I’m not.
What’s the name for the color of leaves at night, a black you cannot
see as other than green?
Seems like the older I get the fewer reasons there are to do the things I don’t want to, which makes them both harder and easier to
do.
37
I like hanging out with kids, since youth is contagious. Only now like my colds, like the years—it s shorter and less intense.
38
The day is so bad I think At least it will be a good story. And then,
the worse it is, the better.
39
Somehow it’s easier to believe people are better than I am than that
they are smarter.
40
Good thing I’m too ignorant to know this has already been said.
41
The unbeliever’s prayer: Help me so little 1 don’t notice. Be the luck I
can take credit for.
42
Our darkest secret is that we don’t need each other. Though it’s not a
secret. Though it’s not true.
Nominated by Renee Ashley, BJ Ward, Richard Kostelanetz