Sam Reviews "Me & Emma" by Elizabeth Flock

"Momma doesn't like to think about things too hard.  I wish I could be more like that.  Seems like all I do is think on things and pretty soon they're worn out in my mind."

"I got handed lemons, too, y'know, but I learned how to make lemonade with them.  No one ever told me I had to add sugar but that's life for you.  It ain't sweet."

"Some days are talking-to-Momma days, some days aren't."

"My head bounces against the counter on its way down, which makes it a little harder not to cry.  But I don't. Cry. That'd be the kiss of death with Momma."

"'I hate you, you little savage. You hear me? I hate you. I hate the way you look, I hate the way you walk, I hate everything about you....'
"I know Momma doesn't mean this. She's just mad and when Momma gets mad she has trouble with her mouth - it won't stop moving, is what the trouble is."

"You know a man can work on his carving his whole life and not git any better at it.  Other things, well, you git better at 'em if you do 'em over an over again through the years. Not wood. You can stay just as bad a carver as you were the day you were born if that's the way it's s'posed to be."

"Answer a question with a question and everyone wins."

"You've never settled into life. You want life to be better to you but it ain't like that.  Not for folks like us.  Life's hard. That's the way it is."

"[She] pulls her case out, settling it on the mattress. It lies there with an open mouth ready to gobble up their lives and sprit it them away from here."

"Sometimes little sisters don't think things through, so it's up to big sisters to help them with that."

Sam Reviews "Gun Machine" by Warren Ellis

“Lots of cops married nurses.  Nurses understood the life:  murderous shiftwork, long stretches of boredom, sudden adrenaline spikes, blood everywhere.”

“Naked shotgun man was going to blow away any asshole who tried to take his home from him because this was his home and no one could make him do anything he didn’t want to do and also he had a shotgun.  He didn’t mention being naked.  Tallow presumed that he was simply too angry for clothes.”

“There was a dark speckling [of blood] on his left side.  Jim Rosato was always on his left side.  Jim never let him drive.”

“For all your big talk about the bad week you’re having, you’re not even angry.  You’re just tired.”

“[He] let the city keep him company for as long as he could stand it.”

“[He] had worked the streets long enough to know that it didn’t always take a big thing to send someone to the point where it seemed to him that the best option was to live outdoors and eat out of garbage sacks.”

“One day his world fell apart and he figured the only way he could force life to make sense again was to walk out into the hallway naked with a shotgun and scream.  It doesn’t always take much to make that happen.  This time, just [an eviction] letter shoved under the door.”

“Doesn’t matter where I get my appetite from so long as I eat at home.”

“Talia’s like this Scandinavian Amazon who can break rocks with her boobs.  She could fit Scarly in her armpit.  Sometimes I think she likes Scarly just because she was the most portable lesbian available.”

"A laugh like bones being rattled in a tin."

"A room that hummed with the sound of machines.  It did not quite smother a sudden composition of sounds from the next floor up:  screams like a cat being dismembered, a deep thump that shook the ceiling; the noise of someone trying to cry while unable to draw breath."

"Testing structures in his mind.  Foundations of fact, scaffolding of speculation." 

"When there was a good evening ahead, with the sky still light, it was like you stole a whole extra day from the world."

"You ever cheat on a girlfriend?  Then you know.  You break a part of the ethical compact, the basic rule that says You Don't Do That, and it's only hard once.  When the sun doesn't go out because you've been so evil...well, it's easier the next time. And the next time. "

"The idea crept out like a spider and set off an autonomic repulsion.  He just didn't want to be part of...  The thought went:  I just don't want to be part of people's lives."

"The jokes turned to ash and blew down the radio waves and away.  Smoke signals."

Sam Reviews "I'm Happy for You (Sort of...Not Really) by Kay Wills Wyma

"Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content."
- Helen Keller

"What we see is often just a snapshot.  Mistaking the Glimpse for reality generally leads us to either judge or covet. Neither of which is beneficial for anyone involved.  One moment does not define a life."

"The answer to our mental self-obsession appears to be pulling the reins on those wandering thoughts and bringing our minds back to the people standing next to us.  Relationship seems to be key to our search for peace.  I can choose to simply accept the kindness without making it about me in some negative way. "

"Jelousy is a useless, time-wasting emotion that's eating me alive."
- A. J. Jacobs

Schadenfreude:  Harm-joy

"And I asked myself, am I loving them well? Really loving them for who they are, not who I want them to be or think they ought to be or who society says they should be? Am I loving them for the special individuals they are? Am I helping them discover their unique gifting and building them up in that? Even when such gifting might take them down a road that looks a bit different from what I or everyone around me expects or values?"

"We should love men enough not to envy."
-Francis Schaeffer

"One of the biggest problems with envy is it shows a lack of appreciation for my own uniqueness and worth.  When you and I envy another person, we aren't even seeing ourselves.  The other one, the envied one, becomes all-important to us. He's gifts, her successes, their achievements! We spend our energies watching someone else, being threatened by that person, not wanting him or her to succeed.  So, in the process, we don't develop our own potential...
"Suppose we can see the successes, the accomplishments, the victories of others as gifts also. That puts them in a different light, when I'm doing that, I discovered, it's hard to keep on envying them. I find myself beginning to celebrate, to rejoice in, what God is doing through them. And that's a victory I could never win by myself.  It's a gift of grace."
-William Brownson

" If I can keep in mind that the wall to which I am racing has been uniquely predestined and calibrated to my specifications, I can break free from envy and discontent. I can be happy for you when you hit a home run. I can find satisfaction in doing my best."

"To be nobody-but-yourself-in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else-means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
-e.e. cummings

"Excellence is not being the best but doing your best."
-Unknown

"If they can go through their lives looking for and appreciating what's good in their friendships, in their romantic relationships and in their work - even if their work is more modest than it would have been 10 years ago - they can live an incredibly satisfying life that way."
-Barry Schwartz

"Unexpected adventure makes for a better story."
-Lynn O'Rourke Hayes

"It isn't wrong to have goals and hopes and dreams. Or to work diligently toward such things. But when those expectations determine our contentment, we may have a problem. Because things usually don't end up the way we think they will."

"A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour."
-Unknown

Sam Reviews "Fat Girl" by Judith Moore

"I hate myself.  I have almost always hated myself, but it's not for bad things I've done.  I do not hate myself for betrayals, for going behind the back of someone who trusted me.  I hate myself because I am not beautiful. I hate myself because I am fat."

"Think of your head as an unsafe neighborhood; don't go there alone."
- Augusten Burroughs, Dry

"People said that inside every fat person a thin person longed to pop out.  I did not believe that. I believed that inside every fat person was a hole the size of the world; I believed that every fat person wanted to fill that hole by eating the world. It wasn't enough to eat food. You had to swallow air, you had to chew up everyone who got near you."

"I hung my head, shut my fat trap and wisely, said nothing.  Nothing was your best bet with mama."

"As mean as she was, her voice was beautiful when she sang, and while she was singing I loved her."

"Grammy kept on not dying, because you could not call what she did 'living'."

"The female human being, given a certain unseemly interpretation of her childhood, specific to the absence of the male parent, will tend to fixate on unavailable males."
-Carrie Fisher, Surrender the Pink

Sam Reviews "Bird Box" by Josh Malerman

"What else might they like if given the chance to view it?  What would the Girl think of a fox?  A racoon?  Even cars were a myth, with only Malorie's amateur drawings as reference.  Boots, bushes, gardens, storefronts, buildings, streets  and stars.  Why, she would have to recreate the globe for them.  But the best they got was fish.  And the Boy loved them. "

"'In a way, time doesn't mean anything anymore.  But it's one of the only things we have that resembles the lives we used to live.'
"'The passing of time?'
"'Yeah.  And what we do with it.'"

"When the cadences oppose, she feels like she could die."

"Maybe animals can't go mad because their brains are too small."

"It's possible that animals don't have the capacity to go mad. Maybe a thing has to be smart enough to lose its mind."

"Muted colors of decay rather than the explosive hues of impact."

"Gary is explaining to Don the way Frank thought. Always the way Frank thought. Never quite what Gary thinks himself."

"Far behind, she heads something she's never heard.  It's like lightning.  A new kind. Or like birds, all of them, in every tree, no longer singing, no longer cooing, but screaming."

"It is better to face madness with a plan than to sit still and let it take you in pieces."

Sam Reviews "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk

"Destroying every scrap of history."

"This isn't about love as in caring.  This is about property as in ownership."

"Where would Jesus be if no one had written the gospels?"

"Crying is right at hand in the smothering dark, closed inside someone else, when you see how everything you can ever accomplish will end up as trash. Anything you're ever proud of will be thrown away."

"This is when I'd cry because right now, your life comes down to nothing, and not even nothing, oblivion.  It's easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die."

"Losing all hope was freedom."

"Because I can't hit bottom, I can't be saved."

"This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time."

"One minute was enough, a person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort.  A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection."

"You've got your sofa issue handled.  Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you."

"A lot of young people try to impress the world and buy too many things. A lot of young people don't know what they really want. Young people, they think they want the whole world. If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't."

"May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect."

"I just don't want to die without a few scars."

"Nothing is static. Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart."

"Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer.  Maybe self-destruction is the answer."

"Maybe we need to break everything to make something better out of ourselves."

"Nothing was solved when the fight was over, but nothing mattered."

"Sometimes you do something, and you get screwed. Sometimes it's the things you don't do, and you get screwed."

"I am Joe's Enraged, Inflamed Sense of Rejection."

"According to the ancient Chinese custom we all learned from television, Tyler is responsible for Marla, forever, because Tyler saved Marla's life."

"The girl is infectious human waste, and she's confused and afraid to commit to the wrong thing so she won't commit to anything.  [She] has no faith in herself, and she's worried that as she grows older, she'll have fewer
and fewer options. Good luck."

"I should run from self-improvement, and I should be running towards disaster.  I can't just play it safe anymore."

"It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything."

"A tiger can smile
"A snake will say it loves you
"Lies make us evil."

"The last thing I want is [her] moving on, one piece of crap at a time."

"Maybe the point is not to forget the rest of yourself if one little part might go bad."

"There are a lot of things we don't want to know about the people we love."

"If this might be the last time they saw you, they really saw you. You had their full attention. People listened instead of just waiting for their turn to speak."

"Only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit."

"I wanted to destroy everything beautiful I'd never have."

"Sweet woodruff gives soap a cut grass smell."

"If you're male and you're Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God.  And if you never knew your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God?"

"A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection."

"That old saying, about how you always kill the thing you love, well it works both ways."

"Sometimes you find your father in your career."

"How everything you ever love will reject you or die.  Everything you ever create will be thrown away.  Everything you're proud of will end up as trash."

"We are not special.  We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens."

Afterword:

"There is nothing a blue-collar nobody in Oregon with a public school education can imagine that a million-billion people haven't already done."

"Being tired isn't the same as being rich, but most of the time it's close enough."

Sam Reviews "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey

"[She] thinks any word or gesture that does not smack od brickyard brawn and brutality is a word or gesture of weak dandyism."

"It's like an old clock that won't tell time but won't stop neither, with the hands bent out of shape and the face bare of numbers and the alarm bell rusted silent, an old, worthless clock that just keeps ticking and cuckooing without meaning nothing."

"As soon as you let down your guard, as soon as you lose once, she's won for good.  And eventually we all got to lose.  Nobody can help that."

"There's no better way in the world  to aggravate somebody who's trying to make it hard for you than by acting like you're not bothered."

"His face is out to me like the face of a beggar, needing so much more'n anybody can give."

"You got to understand that as soon as a man goes to help somebody, he leaves himself wide open."

"Just like she was above him, and sex, and everything else that's weak and of the flesh."

"There'd be my face in the mirror...and I'd think, That ain't me, that ain't my face.  I wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face.  I wasn't even really me then; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted.  It don't seem like I ever been me."

"I was seeing him different than when he first came in; I was seeing more to him than just big hands and red sideburns and a broken-nosed grin.  I'd see him do things that didn't fit with his face or hands, things like painting a picture ... or like writing letters to somebody in a beautiful flowing hand. How could a man who looked like him paint pictures or write letters to people or he upset and worried like I saw him once when he got a letter back?"

"He hadn't let what he looked like run his life one way or another."

"You don't have to apologize for my noi nadequacies, my friend.  It neither fits your character nor complements mine."

"I wanted to reach over and touch the place where he was tattooed, to see if he was still alive. He's lying awful quiet, I told myself, I got to touch him to see if he still alive... That's a lie. I know he's still alive. That ain't the reason I want to touch him. I want to touch him because he's a man. That's a lie too. There's other men around. I could touch them I want to talk to him because I'm one of those queers! But that's a lie too. That's one fear hiding behind another. If I was one of those queers I want to do other things with him. I just want to touch him because he's who he is."

"Perhaps the more insane a man is, the more powerful he could become."

"You have to laugh at the things that hurt you to keep yourself in balance."

"An expression that was allowed only because he figured it'd be too dark for anybody in the car to see, dreadfully tired and strained and frantic, like there wasn't enough time left for something he had to do..."

"His relaxed, good-natured voice doled out his life for us to live, a rollicking past full of kid fun and drinking buddies and loving women and barroom battles over meager honors - for all of us to dream ourselves into."

"[He was] growing almost into a legend. A man out of sight can't be made to look weak."

"Her shoulders and breasts and hips were too wide and her grin too big and open for her to ever be called beautiful, but she was pretty and she was healthy."