Itchy antsy need

He felt that itchy, antsy need to either hit something or do something new and nutty.

– Dennis Lehane, Mystic River : 26

 

Mr Antolini’s speech

   “I have a feeling that you’re riding for some kind of a terrible, terrible fall.   But I don’t honestly know what kind… Are you listening to me?”  “Yes.”  “It might be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everyone who comes in looking as if he might have played football in college.  Then again, you might pick up just enough education to hate people who say, ‘It’s a secret between he and I.’  Or you may end up in some business office, throwing paper-clips at the nearest stenographer.  I just don’t know.  But do you know what I’m driving at, at all?”– J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye : 195

 

You’re a goddamn prince

I stopped on the way, though, and picked up Ackley’s hand, and gave him a big phoney handshake. He pulled it away from me. ‘What’s the idea?’ he said.

‘No idea. I just want to thank you for being such a goddamn prince, that’s all,’ I said. I said it in this very sincere voice. ‘You’re aces, Ackley kid,’ I said. ‘You know that?’

‘Wise guy. Some day someone’s going to bash your–‘

I didn’t even bother to listen to him. I shut the damn door and went out in the corridor.

– J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye : 54

 

Clutter

Her apartment back home was practically an abandoned city of worthless objects: acorns, plastic keys, and ten thousand other things she had no earthly use for. But she had to admit she liked having them there. At some point, when you were fourteen or fifteen, before you reached adulthood or knew who you were, you had to determine whether you were going to be the sort of person who held tight to every single thing that passed through your life, no matter how insignificant it was, or the sort of person who set it all adrift. Life was easier on the people who were willing to relax their grip, but she had decided to be the other sort of person, the sort who wouldn’t let go, and she had done her best to live up to that decision.

– Kevin Brockmeier, The brief history of the dead : p. 196

 

Now being a God boy, that means you are a boy that…

Now being a God boy, that means you are a boy that God has his eye on, that’s all. Like the captain of a football team who sees somebody that might fit into the team pretty well. He doesn’t let on at first, and even makes the going tough for the boy he’s got his eye on, but sooner or later shows that you are sorted out. No matter what happens then, there’s nothing really to be worried about, because God is watching and will fix things up. The boy could really argue with God – get annoyed with him too – and that would be all right.

– Ian Cross, The God Boy 100

 

The God Boy Vs God

You know, if I went after God I could beat him too, unless he killed me. And he wouldn’t want to, if I know God, and there I would have him. I’d be Pope, whether he liked it or not, and boy, I would tell people about God, and he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, except kill me.

– Ian Cross, The God Boy 15

 

Adolescence and self-consciousness

Adolescence is best enjoyed without self-consciousness, but self-consciousness, unfortunately, is its leading symptom. Even when something important happens to you, even when your heart’s getting crushed or exalted, even when you’re absorbed in building the foundations of a personality, there comes these moments when you’re aware that what’s happening is not the real story. Unless you actually die, the real story is still ahead of you. This alone, this cruel mixture of consciousness and irrelevance, this built-in hollowness, is enough to account for how pissed off you are.

– Jonathan Franzen, The Discomfort Zone, p. 113

 

First base

Every time I got to the part about her out with Stradlater in that damn Ed Banky’s car, it almost drove me crazy.  I knew she wouldn’t let him get to first base with her, but it drove me crazy anyway.– J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the
Rye : 84.