Man, I just spent 2 days reading this book and it is was a fun read.  I had to note down some stuff cuz this author puts some scenes into such a great language…it’s like… wow…. he says it so great….and damn its snowin’ hardcore outside! Ok, so that was irrelevant but here it goes:

“I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old.” –Charles Baudelaire–

“I’m moderately fucked.  I’m immoderately–fantastically–fucked.  I’m so fucked I can’t even bring myself to talk about the cause of my extravagant fuckage.  It’s too awful.” (4)

“Don’t get like this.” “Like what?” “Nothing.” “No, really.  Like what?  Upset that you’re trying to screw your way through all of 212 while I sit around pining for you like some kind of neglected, sexless governess out of a Bronte novel?  Like that, you mean?” (8)

“Church and State.  I just feel like our friends should be…mmm….separate but equal.”  (59)

“New York City is like fucking Sex Disney.” (77)

“The bushido of shitbag” “Am I crazy or just lonely?” (87)

“Why do you drink so much? I’m bleaching my intestines.” (134)

“You know, every book is a love letter.  Even if it’s not a romance book.  A book is just taking three hundred pages to say ‘I love you.’  No on’es out there helping these young, anonymous writers along.  No one’s dangling the big bucks in front of them.  These people are out there working night jobs as waiters and bartenders and security guards at warehouses, without health insurance or respect from their peers, trying to write these novels because they have to, because they are compelled by love to do it.  Even with the slushies who can’t spell their own names, you can feel it in their sentences, like you can feel the nervous energy of a first date with someone you really like but don’t know how to express it and so you end up saying all the wrong things.  They’ve got it, they’re feeling it, and they want us to feel it too.  That’s something noble.  That’s something about love.  And I just think that maybe you could be a little scornful to do it.  You used to write nice little notes under the form rejection letter, you know.  I don’t know why you stopped doing that.  It wouldn’t kill you, and it would make the slushies feel very good.  What happened to you?” (154)

“He was staring at you like filet mignon.” (159)

“…Because I didn’t have actual blue toilet cleaner…I dumped a packet of blueberry Kool-Aid in it.  Stylish and seductive, no?” (164)

“We once we made up a language all our own, using food terminology.  It was really quite en eloquent little language.  All concession items were pronouns.  All adjectives were Chinese food.  All vegetables were verbs.  The present tense was the vegetable itself; the past tense was the vegetable preceded by “rotten”; the future tense was that vegetable proceeded by “fresh.”  If a word had no food language equivalent, this was the beautiful part–then you can use the corresponding native language’s word.  For example, “She is going to drive Frank to work because his bus is late again” would be “Cheeseburger fresh avocado Frank to meat loaf pork rinds hamburger bus potato no chopsticks again.

Verbs:

• To Be: potato (most common vegetable, therefore most common verb)
• To Have: rice (similar logic)
• To make love: jalapeno pepper (self-explanatory)
• To like: green pepper
• To dislike: red pepper
• To drive: avocado (from a burning sensations song: “The girls turn the color of an avocado/when he drives down the street in his El dorado)
• to kiss: pea (for the shape the mouth assumes when accepting a pea)

Nouns:

• Work: meat loaf
• boyfriend: chocolate
• girfriend: peanut butter
• father: steak
• mother: little steak
• brother: fried steak
• sister: broiled steak

Adjectives:

• Bad: no soy sauce
• good: soy sauce
• great: extra soy sauce
• fat: extra MSG
• skinny: no MSG
• smart: fried rice
• dumb: no fried rice

Miscellanous:

• Because: pork rinds
• good morning: coffee
• good night: milk
• Hi: lemonade
• Bye: lemons

(169-170)

“Carpe Drinkum!, my friends in college used to say” (172)

“Lies abuse their victims but they corrupt their speakers.” (189)

“My brother has this theory about grief: you have to put it somewhere.  Put it in a bottle, put it in a novel, put it in the ear of your good friend, it doesn’t matter.  Well, it might matter a little.  He clearly chose to put his grief into a bottle and then into a needle, and that didn’t get him too far, but the point is you have to put it somewhere.  If you don’t you’ll explode like an unforked baked potato.” (212)

“P.U.R.E. (Previously Unrecognized Recruiting Error.” (230)

“Question: What’s worse than the woman you love more than anything on earth leaving you? Answer: The woman you love more than anythin on earth leaving you for the man who is the instantiation of everything in the world you hate most.” (242)

“The real cliche is being so afraid of love that you lose it.” (258)

“Sitting around the house talking dirty to an MTV chick does not constitute a sex life.” (266)

“Congratufuckinglations!” (277)

“I discover the cruelty of New York geography: everything is everywhere.  The city is a collage of warring histories and hurtful memories.  My famorite places have become places to avoid at all costs.  One night when a date wants to go to the Blue & Gold it feels like a plagiarism.  A novel impulse for honesty makes me want to say to this woman that this whole drinks scene is unethical, that I am trying to pass this off as fresh material.  “this work has already been done by another girl,” I want to tell her…”(294)

“Register Guy: Hey, don’t you want a mixer?  Me: What do you mean? RG: You can’t drink grain alcohol without a mixer.  It can kill you.  Me: I have one.  RG: You do, huh?  What do you have?  Me: saliva…” (313)

“INTUSSUSCEPTION: the drawing in of something from without, the assimilation of new material.” (320)

So yeah, you obviously can’t get the sarcasm if you don’t read the book…but it was hella funny for me.  I also liked how this person explained the book:

It’s a coming of age book. Yet it’s also a book about not writing a book—until the end. It’s a love story about someone who can’t love. It’s a non cliche about a cliche. It’s a story of redemption and metamorphosis. It’s a comedy about a tragedy.

so yeah, I wanted to place these quotes somewhere and what better place to put it?  If you wanna ask me ’bout the book ask…if not…well… that’s your call.

• Current Mood:  accomplished
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