A nation forgetting its own laughter is in a sad state of affairs

— Sherry Marie Gallagher

And finally the glass that contains and spills this stuff continually while the drinker hunches before it, while the bartender gather sup empties, gives back the drinker's own face. Who knows what it looks like;who cares whether it was young once, or ever lovely, who gives a shit about some drunk rising to stagger toward the bathroom, some man or woman or even lost angel who recklessly threw it all over—heaven, the ether, the celestial works—and said, Fuck it, I want to be human?

— Kim Addonizio

And so, wish becomes pang; to crave, an ache; pleasure, pain. Losing all its pleasure, anticipation cuts the opposite direction and becomes merely a constant, painful reminder of what they’ve lost, forever.

— Geoffrey Wood

And, sure, fine, I do check my phone about every two minutes, but so do a lot of people, and it's better than smoking, that's what I say. It's the new, lung-safe cigarette.

— Aimee Bender

And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

And when a man that old takes up money-hunting, it's like when he takes up gambling or whiskey or women. He ain't going to have time to quit.

— William Faulkner

An imagined pleasure is never really the pleasure, but an imagined pain, in a very real sense, is the pain, because so much of pain is the consciousness of it. It makes itself objective. Whereas to think about pleasure is to step outside of it; to think about a presently felt pain is to step inside it. And in a very real sense, we’ve already got them in Hell.

— Geoffrey Wood

An intelligent person can rationalize anything, a wise person doesn't try.

— Jen Knox

An intensely gripping narrative...expertly crafted and totally addictive...a must-read!

— Maggie Reese

Another piano falls, but this time it's me— or my lascivious loneliness, or my grab bag of mental instabilities and emotional shortcomings, or whatever.

— Kris Kidd