24 quotes
Every object, the old man had said, is but an interpretation of every other object. There is no sure knowledge, only endless process.
Green Eyes (1984)
All journeys end in disappointment if for no other reason than that they end.
“Find your own answers, your own salvation. If you can’t do that,” said Donnell, “then to Hell with you.”
Green Eyes (1984)
Everything I've ever known has been no more than a powerful conviction.
A Walk in the Garden (2003)
I yearned for that future. I wanted to live in the illusion that persuades us that true-life experience can be obtained on the Internet.
I submit that all psychotherapy is manipulation; that as psychiatrists we do not heal people, but manipulate their neuroses into functional modes.
Green Eyes (1984)
Jesus and Mohammed would probably hang out together.
A Walk in the Garden (2003)
Here was a beast for whom there could be no predator. What better definition of God is there than that?
Señor Volto (2003)
She’s sad because she’s drinking to be sad because she’s afraid that what she does not feel is actually a feeling. Typical post-modern Manhattan bullshit.
Only Partly Here (2003)
Depravity always incorporates obsession.
The necessary had been accomplished. That’s the way Les Invisibles work. Singular, unquantifiable events. Impossible to treat statistically, to define with theory.
Green Eyes (1984)
“An attic’s the afterlife of a house,” said Otille, opening the door. “Or so my mother used to say.”
Green Eyes (1984)
Manipulate? Yes, I manipulated. And despite the ensuing events, I would do so again, for it is the function of psychiatry to encourage the living to live.
Green Eyes (1984)
Doesn’t that sound like God to you? This big stupid, invulnerable thing that resembles us and whose creations are more intelligent than it is? The Bible left out that part, but it would explain a great deal.
The Skinny Girl (2011)
It was easy to see how one could think of the family as a single terrible creature stretching back through time, some genetic flaw or chemical magic binding the spirit to the blood.
Green Eyes (1984)
And that in itself was a sufficient reason to hit him, purely for educational purposes: I had, you see, reached the level of drunkenness at which an amoral man such as myself understands his whimsies to be moral imperatives.
Shades (1987)
“I could sell you sorry fuckers anything,” he repeated, “as long as it had a bright package and was wrapped around a chewy nugget of fear. I could be your green-eyed king. But it would bore me to be the salvation of cattle like you.
Green Eyes (1984)
The half moon sailed high, sharp-winged shadows skimming across it, and the conical hills and the vine-shrouded trees washed silver-green under the moonlight had the look of a decaying city millennia after a great catastrophe.
Green Eyes (1984)
We uncovered new forces, we took a step along what may be an endless path toward divinity, we redirected the entire thrust of psychoanalytic theory, and, as with all knowledge, we found that deeper and more compelling mysteries yet lay beyond those we had reduced to the security of fact.
Green Eyes (1984)
That the official and the criminal are inextricably aligned should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the workings of their government, but nowhere is this juxtaposition so literal and apparent as in Mexico City.
The Skinny Girl (2011)