Booknut > Books: can-t-get-enough-of‎ (552)

"Once I mentioned Alessandro, the family had ganged up on me. Arabella screamed like a pterodactyl and demanded to know where Alessandro was staying, while punching her palm with her fist. Bern swore, which had happened exactly six times since he came to live with us. Grandma Frida promised to hit Alessandro with a wrench when he came over. Leon produced a gun, and then Mom asked him what the rule was about guns at the dinner table, and then he said that this was a special case and he had a bullet with Alessandro’s name on it. Then she told him that writing names on bullets was no way to go through life."

'Something remains in the silence after a performance.
It echoes between the seats, winding through aisles and rows, whispering as it returns to the f

'Something remains in the silence after a performance.
It echoes between the seats, winding through aisles and rows, whispering as it returns to the front of the hall.
The stage remembers.
Its polished floor pulses with the heartbeat of every musician who has crossed it and holds within its infinite memory that which murmurs endlessly in silence.
Power.
The same power pulsating in the thick blood now flowing across the pale wood and pooling around the podium. This sacred ground siphons away an artist's life, ingesting ambition and arrogance, and devouring countless dreams of immortality so that it can satiate a voracious audience.
The stage demands to be fed.
When you step on it, you become the willing sacrifice.'

'Leila retreated to the piano, hands trembling at the life spinning out of their control. She pushed the metronome, the precise tick reminding her of measures and boundaries.
Now that Orion was gone, the frantic presto pulse no longer seemed right. She adjusted the speed, reducing it to an ominous adagio that boomed like thunder in her chest.'

'People wanted to see her triumph over grief and become the bloodied gladiator standing alone in the arena. The stage demanded a moving display of grit and tenacity, a story about an inspiring comeback despite tragic suffering.
Leila was now the headliner in a performance selling the American Dream.
The only way to extinguish the sordidness of murder was with a spectacular performance that would be remembered for the ages, a concert that would become an immortal part of her legacy.'

'"I am guessing I can answer your questions just as well as he could."
"Okay," Nalick responded, taking the bait, "Are you the woman that I should marry?"

"Probably, but it is not going to happen," Leila responded.

(...)"And why not?" he inquired.
"Because in order to have a real marriage, both people need to be willing to marry each other." Leila looked him up and down. He was handsome, but he was also an arrogant jerk. "I am not willing to marry you."'

'It wasn't the odd sketches of people with their eyes and faces and mouths scra

'It wasn't the odd sketches of people with their eyes and faces and mouths scratched out, it wasn't the odd and dark poems, it was one phrase.

Put me out of my misery.

Scrawled over and over, filling up two complete pages. I've watched him like a hawk ever since. He smiles now, encouraging me to forget it, like it's just his outlet. He's fine now.

He's fine.

If I had a journal, I'd scrawl that on the pages, over and over, to make it true.'

'Once upon a time, there was a colony of water bugs. They were a close colony, a family. Where one went, the others went.

But every so often, one would straggle away on their own, crawl onto a lily pad, and never return. This was a great mystery to the family of water bugs. They couldn't figure out what was happening to their family members, of why they disappeared. They talked about it often, and worried about it, but they could never figure it out.

Well, one day, another water bug climbed onto the lily pad, drawn there by invisible forces from within itself, forces it didn't understand and couldn't control.
As it sat there in the sun, it transformed into a beautiful dragonfly. It shed its water bug skin, and sprouted iridescent wings that gleamed in the sunlight. Wings so large and strong, it was able to fly into the air, doing loops in the sky.

The new dragonfly was ecstatic with it's new body and thought to itself, 'I need to go back and tell the other. They need to know that this is what happens so they won't be scared.' So he dipped and dove through the air, directly at the water.

But unfortunately, he couldn't dive below the surface to where the water-bugs were swimming. In his new form, the dragonfly was no longer able to communicate with his family.
He felt at peace, though, because he knew that someday, his family would all transform too, and they'd all be together again.'

'Anybody who complains that a retelling of a myth is 'inaccurate' doesn't really understand what it means to retell a myth, or probably even what a myth is.

(...) Everybody's always studying them in school or reading watered-down version of them to little kids, and what that means is that hardly anybody has the time to actually sit down and look at how f***ing funny these things are.

'Uranus suddenly decides he hates all of the kids and intead of like, giving them up for adoption or something, he just decides to try and stuff them all back into his wife like "THESE ARE NOT THE BABIES I ORDERED I AM RETURNING THEM TO THE BABYSTORE."

Which I think demonstrates a really shocking lack of understanding of how babies are made.

(...)Cronus comes up with a more sensible alternative which is to stuff all his kids into his stomach.

(...)So the moral of the story is that if you are not ready to be a father, consider all of your options before skipping directly to cannibalism.'

'Narcissus is gorgeous. Like, imagine if someone could look exactly like bacon tastes and you have a pretty good picture of Narcissus (unless you're a vegetarian).'

'Hades is down in the underworld and he looks up one day and sees her (Persephone) and he goes "Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayum. I gotta get me some of that."

So he just pops on up to the world in his black chariot of ultimate wretchedness and he says, "Hey, little girl, do you want to come to hell?" And she probably would have said no, only he kidnapped her.

Basically Hades is the ultimate ladies' man.'

'So the moral of this story is once again for the gentlemen: Gentlemen, learn to cook one home-cooked meal, and BAM - she will be trapped inside of your house forever, or for half of the year if she has a good lawyer.'