Elwood Swiderski > Elwood's Quotes

“Perché adesso so che fare le cose non ti ferisce:resti ferito se le eviti.”
― Irvine Welsh, The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs

“Depois de sumir, o melhor é continuar assim; voltar é se rematerializar na loucura alheia.”
― Irvine Welsh, Skagboys

“Ah'm thinking about shoutin 'stop' but ah could never turn away at this point. If smack is as addictive as they say, then ah'm already aw the junky ah'm ever gaunny be.”
― Irvine Welsh, Skagboys

“N it's fuckin well beyond violence, it's beyond even sexual; it's a kind ay love, a fuckin bizarre, vain-glorious self-adoration, way past the fuckin ego even. Ah'm findin somethin...ah'm...but it's what bein a hard man is aboot; it's a journey, a fuckin self-destructive quest tae find yir limits, cause they fuckin limits eywis come in the form ay a harder man. A big, stong, stiff-hard man whae can dae it for ye, whae can teach ye, show ye whaire ye stand, where yir fuckin parameters ur.”
― Irvine Welsh, Porno

“A surge ay euphoria comes ower me as ah clock that nippy wee cockney cunt, Nicksy; he's on the baw, giein it loads, mouthing off, so ah steam in wi a dirty two-fitted tackle on him. 'Take that, ya English bastard!”
― Irvine Welsh, Skagboys

“Ye see, Rab, it's due to the way we feel about our arseholes. We now believe, as a species, if our soul is located anywhere in our bodies, it's up our arses. That's where it all goes. It makes sense. That's why we're obsessed with anal jokes, anal sex, anal hobbies...the arsehole - not the brain, not space - is the last frontier. That's what makes us revolutionaries.”
― Irvine Welsh, Porno

“Well, whatever one thinks of the Roman Church, it is a worthy and powerful foe. I could accept that sort of conversion with grace. But I shall be very disappointed indeed if we lose him to the Presbyterians.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“...it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Me she was watching for: me. And the heart-shock of believing, for only a moment, that you might just have what could never be yours.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“He left Molie’s at ten past midnight, twelve hundred New Dollars lighter. The pawnbroker had also sold him a limited but fairly effective disguise: gray hair, spectacles, mouth wadding, plastic buck-teeth which subtly transfigured his lip line. “Give yourself a little limp, too,” Molie advised. “Not a big attention-getter. Just a little one. Remember, you have the power to cloud men’s minds, if you use it. Don’t remember that line, do ya?” Richards didn’t.”
― Richard Bachman, The Running Man

“He was a heavy breather. You could hear him puffing and blowing into the mike up there like some large and sweaty animal. I don't like that, never have. My father is like that on the telephone. A lot of heavy breathing in your ear, so you can almost smell the scotch and Pall Malls on his breath. It always seems unsanitary and somehow homosexual.”
― Richard Bachman, Rage

“The apartment was haunted by the ghost of long-departed cabbage.”
― Richard Bachman, The Running Man

“Sie pflegten mir Angst zu machen, und sie machen mir immer noch Angst, aber jetzt langweilen Sie mich auch noch, und ich habe mich entschlossen, das nicht mehr hinzunehmen”
― Richard Bachman, Rage

“So sind die Dinge manchmal. Wenn alles am schlimmsten ist, dann wirft der Verstand alles in einen Papierkorb und geht für eine Weile nach Florida. Da ist ein Was-zur-Hölle-soll's?-Gefühl in einem, während man da-steht und über die Schulter zu der Brücke zurückblickt, die man soeben niedergebrannt hat.”
― Richard Bachman, Rage

“At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“One always has exaggerated ideas about what one doesn't know.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“There is a terrible emptiness in me, an indifference that hurts.”
― Albert Camus, The First Man

“Whatever we may do, excess will always keep its place in the heart of man, in the place where solitude is found. We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others.”
― Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt

“I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness. ”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“When the Pentagon feels free and even gleeful about killing anybody and Everybody who gets in the way of their vicious crusade for oil, the public soul of this country has changed forever, and professional sports is only a serenade for the death of the American dream. Mahalo.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness: Modern History from the ESPN.com Sports Desk

“Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective. So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle everyday? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything anther than galloping neurosis?”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“I don't mean to say that I'm about to state my credo here on this page, but merely to affirm, sincerely for the first time in my life, my belief in man as an individual and independent entity. Certainly not independence in the everyday sense of the word, but pertaining to a freedom and mobility of thought that few people are able - or even have the courage - to achieve.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

“Novelists have, on the average, about the same IQs as the cosmetic consultants at Bloomingdale’s department store. Our power is patience. We have discovered that writing allows even a stupid person to seem halfway intelligent, if only that person will write the same thought over and over again, improving it just a little bit each time. It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anybody can do it. All it takes is time.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

“I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“Everything suddenly seems displaced, subtle gradations erase borders, but it’s more forceful than that.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Glamorama

“The heroin flowing through me, I thought about the last time I saw my father alive. He was drunk and overweight in a restaurant in Beverly Hills, and curling into myself on the bed I thought: What if I had done something that day? I had just sat passively in a restaurant booth as the midday light filled the half-empty dining room, pondering a decision. The decision was: should you disarm him? That was the word I remember: disarm. Should you tell him something that might not be the truth but would get the desired reaction? And what was I going to convince him of, even though it was a lie? Did it matter? Whatever it was, it would constitute a new beginning. The immediate line: You’re my father and I love you. I remember staring at the white tablecloth as I contemplated saying this. Could I actually do it? I didn’t believe it, and it wasn’t true, but I wanted it to be. For one moment, as my father ordered another vodka (it was two in the afternoon; this was his fourth) and started ranting about my mother and the slump in California real estate and how “your sisters” never called him, I realized it could actually happen, and that by saying this I would save him. I suddenly saw a future with my father. But the check came along with the drink and I was knocked out of my reverie by an argument he wanted to start and I simply stood up and walked away from the booth without looking back at him or saying goodbye and then I was standing in sunlight. Loosening my tie as a parking valet pulled up to the curb in the cream-colored 450 SL. I half smiled at the memory, for thinking that I could just let go of the damage that a father can do to a son. I never spoke to him again.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“About a week ago I was sitting in L.A.'s chicest nightclub with a few friends and the DJ was playing Yaz and Bowie and the videos were on and I was on my third gin and tonic and I realized that no matter where I am it's always the same. Camden, New York, L.A., Palm Springs - it really doesn't seem to matter. Maybe this should be disturbing but it's really not. I find it kind of comforting.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, The Informers

“I want to take you away from this," I say, motioning around the kitchen, spastic. "From sushi and elves and... STUFF.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho