“
Jesper knocked his head against the hull and cast his eyes heavenward. “Fine. But if Pekka Rollins kills us all, I’m going to get Wylan’s ghost to teach my ghost how to play the flute just so that I can annoy the hell out of your ghost.”
Brekker’s lips quirked. “I’ll just hire Matthias’ ghost to kick your ghost’s ass.”
“My ghost won’t associate with your ghost,” Matthias said primly, and then wondered if the sea air was rotting his brain.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
“
Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts,
Teach us something please,
Whether we be old and bald,
Or young with scabby knees,
Our heads could do with filling
With some interesting stuff,
For now they're bare and full of air,
Dead flies and bits of fluff,
So teach us something worth knowing,
Bring us back what we've forgot,
Just do your best, we'll do the rest,
And learn until our brains all rot...
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
“
The more you talk about it, rehash it, rethink it, cross analyze it, debate it, respond to it, get paranoid about it, compete with it, complain about it, immortalize it, cry over it, kick it, defame it, stalk it, gossip about it, pray over it, put it down or dissect its motives it continues to rot in your brain. It is dead. It is over. It is gone. It is done. It is time to bury it because it is smelling up your life and no one wants to be near your rotted corpse of memories and decaying attitude. Be the funeral director of your life and bury that thing!
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
A rumor is a social cancer: it is difficult to contain and it rots the brains of the masses. However, the real danger is that so many people find rumors enjoyable. That part causes the infection. And in such cases when a rumor is only partially made of truth, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where the information may have gone wrong. It is passed on and on until some brave soul questions its validity; that brave soul refuses to bite the apple and let the apple eat him. Forced to start from scratch for the sake of purity and truth, that brave soul, figuratively speaking, fully amputates the information in order to protect his personal judgment. In other words, his ignorance is to be valued more than the lie believed to be true.
”
”
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
“
I have to keep moving
I don't want to think
I'm going to work all day today
I don't want to stop
Don't want to let my brain catch up my thoughts
How will I be able to tell them that I'm a shadow
A grey patch of cold rotting life
”
”
Henry Rollins (See a Grown Man Cry, Now Watch Him Die)
“
My ghost won't associate with your ghost," Matthias said primly, and then wondered if the sea air was rotting his brain.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
“
What actually happens when you die is that your brain stops working and your body rots, like Rabbit did when he died and we buried him in the earth at the bottom of the garden. And all his molecules were broken down into other molecules and they went into the earth and were eaten by worms and went into the plants and if we go and dig in the same place in 10 years there will be nothing exept his skeleton left. And in 1,000 years even his skeleton will be gone. But that is all right because he is a part of the flowers and the apple tree and the hawthorn bush now.
”
”
Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time)
“
My rotting brain had lied to me; of course talking would help. Of course my loving, caring friends telling me it would get better would help. They fed ropes down the hold I'd been digging, and even if they couldn't pull me up, they at least reminded me that there was a world beyond this, where I'd been before.
”
”
Dodie Clark (Secrets for the Mad)
“
But it was pointless, it was stupid; he thought about thoughtless things. If I were a seabird . . . but how could you be a seabird? If you were a seabird your brain would be tiny and stupid and you would love half-rotted fish guts and tweaking the eyes out of little grazing animals; you would know no poetry and you could never appreciate flying as fully as the human on the ground yearning to be you.
If you wanted to be a seabird you deserved to be one.
”
”
Iain M. Banks (Use of Weapons (Culture, #3))
“
It's time, Old Captain, lift anchor, sink!
The land rots; we shall sail into the night;
if now the sky and sea are black as ink
our hearts, as you must know, are filled with light.
Only when we drink poison are we well —
we want, this fire so burns our brain tissue,
to drown in the abyss — heaven or hell,
who cares? Through the unknown, we'll find the new. ("Le Voyage")
”
”
Charles Baudelaire (Flowers of Evil and Other Works/Les Fleurs du Mal et Oeuvres Choisies : A Dual-Language Book (Dover Foreign Language Study Guides) (English and French Edition))
“
If only religion were an opiate. No known narcotic rots the brain so fast.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (The Quotable Hitchens from Alcohol to Zionism: The Very Best of Christopher Hitchens)
“
The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set --
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone's place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink --
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES!
'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'What used the darling ones to do?
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it's Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole-
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks-
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.
”
”
Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Charlie Bucket, #1))
“
Fine. But if Pekka Rollins kills us all, I'm going to get Wylan's ghost to teach my ghost how to play the flute just so that I can annoy the hell out of your ghost."
Brekkers lips quirked. "I'll just hire Matthias' ghost to kick your ghost's ass."
"My ghost won't associate with your ghost," Matthias said primly, and then wondered if the sea air was rotting his brain.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
“
When your time is yours, use it to create something, Father John had always told them. A picture, some words, anything. Don’t rot your brain with gossip.
”
”
Christina Lauren (The House)
“
I'd love to watch TV all the time, but it rots our brains. Before I came down from Heaven Ma left it on all day long and got turned into a zombie that's like a ghost but walks 'thump thump.' So now she always switches off after one show, then the cells multiply again in the day and we can watch another show after dinner and grow more brains in our sleep.
”
”
Emma Donoghue (Room)
“
George Harrison: The day after the Blue Angel audition, John showed up to rehearsal with a long list of name suggestions, and I remember each and every one of them: the Deads-men, the Deadmen, the Undeads-men, the Undeadmen, the Rots, the Rotters, the Dirts, the Dirty Ones, the Grayboys, the Eaten Brains, the Eating Brains, the Mersey Beaters, the Mersey Beaten, the Bloodless, the Graves, the Headstones, and the Liverpools of Blood. Paul ripped off John's right arm and used it to slap John across the face, then he said, "Those're horrible, mate, just horrible, y'know.
”
”
Alan Goldsher
“
As the blood poured from his tattered heart into the open air and his brain suffocated, all those incomplete thoughts of Wittgenstein decayed with the dying neurons. Neural connections in the gray matter storing memories and ideas in their ordered configurations fired across the gaps, last gaps of mental life. Thoughts on Truth and Will were erased as flesh sloshed soft and limp against alabaster, no more than rotting human fruit.
”
”
Janna Levin (A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines)
“
Glad to see your brain hasn't been entirely rotted by books.
”
”
Ken Liu (Speaking Bones (The Dandelion Dynasty, #4))
“
Testosterone rots the brain . . .
”
”
S.M. Stirling (The Scourge of God (Emberverse, #5))
“
What actually happens when you die is that your brain stops working and your body rots, like Rabbit did when he died and we buried him in the earth at the bottom of the garden. And all his molecules were broken down into other molecules and they went into the earth and were eaten by worms and went into the plants and if we go dig in the same place in 10 years there will be nothing except his skeleton left. And in 1,000 years even his skeleton will be gone. But that is all right because he is part of the flowers and the apple tree and the hawthorn bush now.
When people die they are sometimes put into coffins which means that they don't mix with the earth for a very long time until the wood of the coffin rots.
But Mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burnt and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I couldn't ask at the crematorium because I didn't go to the funeral. But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antartic, or coming down as rain in rainforests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere.
”
”
Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time)
“
I feel guilty because for a long time I didn't allow myself a television, and I used to drop that fact in conversation to impress people. I thought it made me sound dignified. A couple of years ago, however, I visited a church in the suburbs and there was this blowhard preacher talking about how television rots your brain. He said that when we are watching television our minds are working no harder than when we are sleeping. I thought that sounded heavenly. I bought one that afternoon.
”
”
Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality (Paperback))
“
Morrell, ever a true comrade, too had a splendid brain. In fact, and I who am about to die have the right to say it without incurring the charge of immodesty, the three best minds in San Quentin from the Warden down were the three that rotted there together in solitary. And here at the end of my days, reviewing all that I have known of life, I am compelled to the conclusion that strong minds are never docile. The stupid men, the fearful men, the men ungifted with passionate rightness and fearless championship - these are the men who make model prisoners. I thank all gods that Jake Oppenheimer, Ed Morrell, and I were not model prisoners.
”
”
Jack London (The Star Rover (Modern Library Classics))
“
IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD! IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD! IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND! IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND! HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE! HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE! HE CANNOT THINK—HE ONLY SEES!
”
”
Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
“
God
In his malodorous brain what slugs and mire,
Lanthorned in his oblique eyes, guttering burned!
His body lodged a rat where men nursed souls.
The world flashed grape-green eyes of a foiled cat
To him. On fragments of an old shrunk power,
On shy and maimed, on women wrung awry,
He lay, a bullying hulk, to crush them more.
But when one, fearless, turned and clawed like bronze,
Cringing was easy to blunt these stern paws,
And he would weigh the heavier on those after.
Who rests in God's mean flattery now? Your wealth
Is but his cunning to make death more hard.
Your iron sinews take more pain in breaking.
And he has made the market for your beauty
Too poor to buy, although you die to sell.
Only that he has never heard of sleep;
And when the cats come out the rats are sly.
Here we are safe till he slinks in at dawn
But he has gnawed a fibre from strange roots,
And in the morning some pale wonder ceases.
Things are not strange and strange things are forgetful.
Ah! if the day were arid, somehow lost
Out of us, but it is as hair of us,
And only in the hush no wind stirs it.
And in the light vague trouble lifts and breathes,
And restlessness still shadows the lost ways.
The fingers shut on voices that pass through,
Where blind farewells are taken easily ....
Ah! this miasma of a rotting God!
”
”
Isaac Rosenberg (The Poems and Plays of Isaac Rosenberg (|c OET |t Oxford English Texts))
“
Fine. But if Pekka Rollins kills us all, I’m going to get Wylan’s ghost to teach my ghost how to play the flute just so that I can annoy the hell out of your ghost.” Brekker’s lips quirked. “I’ll just hire Matthias’ ghost to kick your ghost’s ass.” “My ghost won’t associate with your ghost,” Matthias said primly, and then wondered if the sea air was rotting his brain.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
“
My ghost won't associate with your ghost,' Matthias said primly, and then wondered if the sea air was rotting his brain.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
“
Is this all there is waiting for Renee? Love, maybe, and then decay? Her body catching up with the rot in her brain?
”
”
Samantha Allen (Patricia Wants to Cuddle)
“
On Hallows Eve, we witches meet
to broil and bubble tasty treats
like goblin thumbs with venom dip,
crisp bat wings, and fried fingertips.
We bake the loudest cackle crunch,
and brew the thickest quagmire punch.
Delicious are the rotting flies
when sprinkled over spider pies.
And, my oh my, the ogre brains
all scrambled up with wolf remains!
But what I love the most, it’s true,
are festered boils mixed in a stew.
They cook up oh so tenderly.
It goes quite well with mugwort tea.
So don’t be shy; the cauldron’s hot.
Jump in! We witches eat a lot!
”
”
Richelle E. Goodrich (Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year)
“
A skull stared back at Sera, gaping dark holes reflecting the starlight above her. It was oddly beautiful in a way. The brain and face rotted away, and all that was left were the stars.
”
”
Avery Carter (The Ghost and the Real Girl (Caelum Stories Book 1))
“
How could you sleep, knowing that any second your insides might begin to rot, your skin decay to slime, your brain shrivel to dust?”
“I fell asleep with my throat cut. I am a professional.
”
”
A.E. Marling (Brood of Bones)
“
Jesper knocked his head against the hull and cast his eyes heavenward. “Fine. But if Pekka Rollins kills us all, I’m going to get Wylan’s ghost to teach my ghost how to play the flute just so that I can annoy the hell out of your ghost.”
Brekker’s lips quirked. “I’ll just hire Matthias’ ghost to kick your ghost’s ass.”
“My ghost won’t associate with your ghost,” Matthias said primly, and then wondered if the sea air was rotting his brain.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
“
Plenty of people have said pleasant comments to me over the course of my life. I don't remember any of them. My brain keeps only the worst experiences intact, transferring them all to long term memory storage while compliments and praise rot away.
”
”
Sarah Hogle (Just Like Magic)
“
He gave it its present name, and lived here shut up: day and night poring over the wicked heaps of papers in the suit, and hoping against hope to disentangle it from its mystification and bring it to a close. In the meantime, the place became dilapidated, the wind whistled through the cracked walls, the rain fell through the broken roof, the weeds choked the passage to the rotting door. When I brought what remained of him home here, the brains seemed to me to have been blown out of the house too; it was so shattered and ruined.
”
”
Charles Dickens (Bleak House)
“
That's the wormwood," Robert Jordan told him. "In this, the real absinthe, there is wormwood. It's supposed to rot your brain out but I don't believe it. It only changes the ideas. You should pour water into it very slowly, a few drops at a time. But I poured it into the water.
”
”
Ernest Hemingway (For Whom the Bell Tolls)
“
My conception of a novel is that it ought to be a personal struggle, a direct and total engagement with the author's story of his or her own life. This conception, again, I take from Kafka, who, although he was never transformed into an insect, and although he never had a piece of food (an apple from his family's table!) lodged in his flesh and rotting there, devoted his whole life as a writer to describing his personal struggle with his family, with women, with moral law, with his Jewish heritage, with his Unconscious, with his sense of guilt, and with the modern world. Kafka's work, which grows out of the nighttime dreamworld in Kafka's brain, is *more* autobiographical than any realistic retelling of his daytime experiences at the office or with his family or with a prostitute could have been. What is fiction, after all, if not a kind of purposeful dreaming? The writer works to create a dream that is vivid and has meaning, so that the reader can then vividly dream it and experience meaning. And work like Kafka's, which seems to proceed directly from dream, is therefore an exceptionally pure form of autobiography. There's an important paradox here that I would like to stress: the greater the autobiographical content of a fiction writer's work, the *smaller* its superficial resemblance to the writer's actual life. The deeper the writer digs for meaning, the more the random particulars of the writer's life become *impediments* to deliberate dreaming.
”
”
Jonathan Franzen (Farther Away)
“
JINGLE
To show the fat brain
rotting like stumps of brown teeth
in an old bright throat
is the final clever thrill
of summer lads all dead with love.
So here is mine,
torn and stretched for the sun,
to be used for a drum or a tambourine,
to be scratched with poetry
by Kafka’s machine
”
”
Leonard Cohen (Let Us Compare Mythologies)
“
I longed for someone to scrape out every remnant of Nic from my brain and scrape out the knowledge of what was lost and scrape out the worry and not only my anguish but his and the burning inside like I might scrape out the seeds and juicy pulp of an overripe melon, leaving no trace of the rotted flesh.
”
”
David Sheff (Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction)
“
Bring back what we’ve forgot, Just do your best, we’ll do the rest, And learn until our brains all rot.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
“
Literacy rots the brain, I'm afraid. And a rotten mind is of no use to the New Order. Sadly, there must be consequences.
”
”
James Patterson (The Fire (Witch & Wizard, #3))
“
The winter of love is a cellar of empty bins / In an orchard soft with rot."
The soft with rot part sounded so familiar, but it took a few moments before she made the connection as to why. "He was mumbling that to me," she said. A clear image of Marcus, gaunt and pale in his dining room deathbed, lit up her brain. She hadn't thought of him like that in so long. "The last time I saw him."
"He said it was you," Jackson said, suddenly looking at somber as she felt. "You were going to be those empty bins, once he died. And it was maybe the saddest thing I had ever heard.
”
”
Moriah McStay (Everything That Makes You)
“
We cannot think another’s thoughts, but we can feel their pain. Also, their pleasure, but we focus on pain because pain threatens us. We turn our eyes and block our ears and pretend it is not ours to feel. We let our brains rule our bodies. Our brains tell us we cannot withstand all the feeling, that our bodies are not capable. But we have forgotten—I have forgotten—that we heal, not through logic, not through the brain, but through discharging energy. When we have a fever, we sweat and have fever dreams that make us writhe and cry out. When we eat something rotten, we heave and vomit and shit liquid. We absorb pain and anger through the body, and we must expel it through the body, like a virus, like rot. Can I lick myself clean? Can I scale my skin? Can I molt?
”
”
Nadia Owusu (Aftershocks)
“
There is no future in it, Will Henry,” he said pensively. “The future belongs to science. The fate of our species will be determined by the likes of Edison and Tesla, not Wordsworth or Whitman. The poets will lie upon the shores of Babylon and weep, poisoned by the fruit that grows from the ground where the Muses’ corpses rot. The poets’ voices will be drowned out by the gears of progress. I foresee the day when all sentiment is reduced to a chemical equation in our brains—hope, faith, even love—their exact locations pinned down and mapped out, so we may point to it and say, ‘Here, in this region of our cerebral cortex, lies the soul.’
”
”
Rick Yancey (The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist, #2))
“
Jesper knocked his head against the hull and cast his eyes heavenward. "Fine. But if Pekka Rollins kills us all, I'm going to get Wylan's ghost to teach my ghost how to play the flute just so that I can annoy the hell out of your ghost." Brekker's lips quirked. "I'll just hire Matthias' ghost to kick your ghost's ass." "My ghost won't associate with your ghost," Matthias said primly, and then wondered if the sea air was rotting his brain.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
“
And she's crying so hard. And I'm still blinking, but I've stopped breathing. My hands are clenched with hatred, so much hatred! Like poison in my veins, coursing to my brain, rotting everything, everything on its way. All the good feelings rotting away." - Stephen Richards
”
”
Alice Rachel (Losing Ground: A Stephen Richards Novella 1 (Under Ground Book #1.5))
“
This is a constraint of evolution. We weren’t built to acquire new cognitive abilities de novo. The only materials used for modern human cognition are these ancient structures that have to be commandeered to new purposes. Everything we do is built on the back of these apeish structures. Here we’re talking about the insular cortex, which receives the inputs from the viscera. You find rotting food disgusting—that’s the tale told by the insula. And the only way to build a mind that can find abstract ideas unacceptable is to repurpose, or extend the purpose, of those brain areas.
”
”
Sam Harris (Making Sense)
“
Keep reading. I’ve told everyone I know to stop wasting time on television. It really does rot your brain. It lowers your ability to think for yourself. If your addiction to the boob tube is too great, get up a few minutes earlier each day and learn something new from your historical past by reading.
”
”
Jeff Nebeker-Johnson (Luke's Justice : The Darkness Saga)
“
What actually happens when you die is your brain stops working and your body rots, like Rabbit did when he died and we buried him in the earth at the bottom of the garden. And all his molecules were broken down into other molecules and they went into the earth and were eaten by worms and went into the plants and if we go and dig in the same place in 10 years there will be nothing except his skeleton left. And in 1,000 years even his skeleton will be gone. But that is all right because he is a part of the flowers and the apple tree and the hawthorn bush now.
When people die they are sometimes put into coffins, which mean that they don't mix with the earth for a very long time until the wood of the coffin rots.
But Mother was cremated. This means she was put into a coffin and burned and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I couldn't ask at the crematorium because I didn't go to the funeral. But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antarctic, or coming down as rain in the rain forests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere.
”
”
Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (SparkNotes Literature Guide) (Volume 25) (SparkNotes Literature Guide Series))
“
He was a man obsessed. He didn’t think Columbia understood how obsessed he had become with her in such a short time. He supposed all signs pointed to it, and if the myriad of daytime talk shows he’d rotted his brain with from time to time were correct, he could be accused of being codependent or falling to fast.
But he was falling, he fell. He could feel her in his bones, his marrow, his blood…his cock. Every time he thought about how close he had come to killing her, he wanted to tear at his flesh and howl at his near self-destruction, for if she were gone from him now it would be an act against himself.
”
”
Jaden Wilkes (The Beast (The Beast, #1))
“
For there is such a little time that your youth will last-- such a little time. The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!”
Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering. The spray of lilac fell from his hand upon the gravel. A furry bee came and buzzed round it for a moment. Then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated globe of the tiny blossoms. He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression, or when some thought that terrifies us lays sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield. After a time the bee flew away.
”
”
Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
“
In the meantime, the place became dilapidated, the wind whistled through the cracked walls, the rain fell through the broken roof, the weeds choked the passage to the rotting door. When I brought what remained of him home here, the brains seemed to me to have been blown out of the house too, it was so shattered and ruined.
”
”
Charles Dickens (The Complete Works of Charles Dickens)
“
A Hand-Mirror Hold it up sternly— see this it sends back, (who is it? is it you?) Outside fair costume, within ashes and filth, No more a flashing eye, no more a sonorous voice or springy step, Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step, A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh, Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous, Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination, Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams, Words babble, hearing and touch callous, No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex; Such from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence, Such a result so soon— and from such a beginning!
”
”
Walt Whitman
“
I’m going to get Wylan’s ghost to teach my ghost how to play the flute just so that I can annoy the hell out of your ghost.” Brekker’s lips quirked. “I’ll just hire Matthias’ ghost to kick your ghost’s ass.” “My ghost won’t associate with your ghost,” Matthias said primly, and then wondered if the sea air was rotting his brain.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
“
Why," I asked, "since you live your wisdom, why don't you write your memoirs?—or simply," I went on, seeing him smile, "what you remember of your travels?"
"Because I don't want to remember," he answered. "If I did, I might keep the future from happening by letting the past encroach upon it. I create each hour's newness by forgetting yesterday completely. Having been happy is never enough for me. I don't believe in dead things."
[. . .]
"If only our wretched brains could really embalm our memories! But memories don't keep well. The delicate ones wither, the voluptuous ones rot, the most delicious ones are the most dangerous later on. The things you repent were delicious once...
”
”
André Gide (The Immoralist)
“
if Pekka Rollins kills us all, I’m going to get Wylan’s ghost to teach my ghost how to play the flute just so that I can annoy the hell out of your ghost.” Brekker’s lips quirked. “I’ll just hire Matthias’ ghost to kick your ghost’s ass.” “My ghost won’t associate with your ghost,” Matthias said primly, and then wondered if the sea air was rotting his brain.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
“
If You're Gonna Be Dumb, You Gotta Be Tough"
If your gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough
When you get knocked down you gotta get back up,
If your gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough
When you get knocked down you gotta get back up,
I ain't the sharpest knife in the drawer but I know enough, to know,
If your gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough
I lit my brain with Rot-Gut whiskey
'Till all my pain was chicken fried
And I had dudes with badges frisk me
Teach me how to swallow pride
I took advice no fool would take
I got some habits I can't shake
I ain't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I know enough to know
If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough
If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough
When you get knocked down, you gotta get back up
That's the way it is in life and love
If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough
I've been up and down and down and out
I've been left and right and wrong
Well I've walked the walk and I've run my mouth
I've been on the short end for too long
But if they gave medals for honky tonk wars
Hell, I'd keep mine in my chest of drawers
With my IRS bills and divorce papers and all that stuff
If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough
If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough
When you get knocked down, you gotta get back up
I ain't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I know enough to know
If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough
If you're gonna be dumb you gotta be tough
”
”
Karen O
“
The purpose of my life had always been to free people from concern. . . . How will you serve the world? What do they need that your talent can provide? That’s all you have to figure out. . . . The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is. Everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart, and all that will be left of you is what was in your heart.
”
”
Jim Kwik (Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life)
“
Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts,
Teach us something please,
Whether we be old and bald
Or young with scabby knees
Our heads could do with filling,
With some interesting stuff,
For now they're bare and full of air,
Dead flies and bits of fluff.
So teach us things worth knowing,
Bring back what we've forgot,
Just do your best, we'll do the rest,
And learn until our brains all rot.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
“
Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring. Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit. Some would find fault with the morning-red, if they ever got up early enough. “They pretend,” as I hear, “that the verses of Kabir have four different senses; illusion, spirit, intellect, and the exoteric doctrine of the Vedas;” but in this part of the world it is considered a ground for complaint if a man’s writings admit of more than one interpretation. While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?
”
”
Henry David Thoreau (Walden; Or, Life in the Woods)
“
To wonder just exactly what This does to your beloved tot? IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD! IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD! IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND! IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND! HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE! HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE! HE CANNOT THINK – HE ONLY SEES! “All right!” you’ll cry. “All right!” you’ll say, “But if we take the set away, What shall we do to entertain Our darling children! Please explain!” We’ll answer this by asking you, “What used the darling ones to do? How used they keep themselves contented Before this monster was invented?” Have you forgotten? Don’t you know? We’ll say it very loud and slow: THEY … USED … TO … READ! They’d READ and READ, AND READ and READ, and then proceed TO READ some more.
”
”
Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Charlie Bucket, #1))
“
High and mighty guzzlers, and you, O all you precious pox-ridden—while you have the leisure and I have nothing else more important to do, let me ask you a question: why does everybody say, as if it were proverbially true, that the world is no longer flat? Understand, please, that "flat" here means "without zest, unsalted, insipid, washed-out": taking it metaphorically, it signifies "crazy, foolish, senseless, rot-brained." Would you argue, as indeed one might logically infer, that if we say that the world has been flat, now we have to say that it's become wise? What was it that made it flat? Why was it flat? Why should it be wise? What do you think ancient stupidity was? What do you think constitutes our present wisdom? What made it flat? What has made it wise? Are there more lovers of flatness or more lovers of wisdom? Just exactly when was it flat? Just exactly when was it wise? Who's responsible for that earlier flatness? Who's responsible for that later wisdom? Why did that ancient flatness end right now, and not at some other time? Why did our present wisdom begin right now, and not sooner? What harm did our earlier flatness do us? What good is this new wisdom? How did we get rid of our ancient flatness? How was our present wisdom brought about?
”
”
François Rabelais (Gargantua and Pantagruel)
“
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnoti[z]ed by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keep them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink-
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
It rots the senses in the head!
It kills imagination dead!
It clogs and clutters up the mind!
It makes a child so dull and blind
He can no longer understand
A fantasy, a fairyland!
His brain becomes as soft as cheese!
His powers of thinking rust and freeze!
He cannot think-he only sees!
'All right' you'll cry. 'All right' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
They... used ... to... read! They'd read and read,
And read and read, and then proceed
To read some more, Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!...
Oh books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall...
...They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something good to read.
And once they start-oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did...
”
”
Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Charlie Bucket, #1))
“
The glove comes off, flops loosely over, and there's suddenly horror beating into his brain, smashing, pounding, battering. He reels a little in his chair, has to hold onto the edge of the table with both hands, at the impact of it.
A clawlike thing - two of the finger extremities already bare of flesh as far as the second joint; two more with only shriveled, bloodless, rotting remnants of it adhering, only the thumb intact, and that already unhealthy-looking, flabby. A dead hand - the hand of a skeleton - on a still-living body. A body he was dancing with only a few minutes ago.
A rank odor, a smell of decay, of the grave and of the tomb, hovers about the two of them now.
A woman points from the next table, screams. She's seen it, too. She hides her face, cowers against her companion's shoulder, shudders. Then he sees it too. His collar's suddenly too tight for him.
Others see it, one by one. A wave of impalpable horror spreads centrifugally from that thing lying there in the blazing electric light on O'Shaughnessy's table. The skeleton at the feast! ("Jane Brown's Body")
”
”
Cornell Woolrich (The Fantastic Stories of Cornell Woolrich (Alternatives SF Series))
“
The next day brought death and judgement, stirring his soul slowly from its listless despair. The faint glimmer of fear became a terror of spirit as the hoarse voice of the preacher blew death into his soul. He suffered its agony. He felt the death chill touch the extremities and creep onward towards the heart, the film of death veiling the eyes, the bright centres of the brain extinguished one by one like lamps, the last sweat oozing upon the skin, the powerlessness of the dying limbs, the speech thickening and wandering and failing, the heart throbbing faintly and more faintly, all but vanquished, the breath, the poor breath, the poor helpless human spirit, sobbing and sighing, gurgling and rattling in the throat. No help! No help! He — he himself — his body to which he had yielded was dying. Into the grave with it. Nail it down into a wooden box, the corpse. Carry it out of the house on the shoulders of hirelings. Thrust it out of men's sight into a long hole in the ground, into the grave, to rot, to feed the mass of its creeping worms and to be devoured by scuttling plump-bellied rats.
”
”
James Joyce (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)
“
[…] if sophistication is the ability to put a smile on one's existential desperation, then the fear of a glossy sheen is actually the fear that surface equals depth.
***
[…] we wake up, we do something—anything—we go to sleep, and we repeat it about 22,000 more times, and then we die.
***
Part of our new boredom is that our brain doesn't have any downtime. Even the smallest amount of time not being engaged creates a spooky sensatino that maybe you're on the wrong track. Reboot your computer and sit there waiting for it to do its thing, and within seventeen seconds you experience a small existential implosion when you remember that fifteen years ago life was nothing but this kind of moment. Gosh, mabe I'll read a book. Or go for a walk.
Sorry.
Probably not going to happen. Hey, is that the new trailer for Ex Machina?
***
In the 1990s there was that expression, "Get a life!" You used to say it to people who were overly fixating on some sort of minutia or detail or thought thread, and by saying, "Get a life," you were trying to snap them out of their obsession and get them to join the rest of us who are still out in the world, taking walks and contemplating trees and birds. The expression made sense at the time, but it's been years since I've heard anyone use it anywhere. What did it mean then, "getting a life"? Did we all get one? Or maybe we've all not got lives anymore, and calling attention to one person without a life would put the spotlight on all of humanity and our now full-time pursuit of minutia, details and tangential idea threads.
***
I don't buy lottery tickets because they spook me. If you buy a one-in-fifty-million chance to win a cash jackpoint, you're simultaneously tempting fate and adding all sorts of other bonus probabilities to your plance of existence: car crashes, random shootings, being struck by a meteorite. Why open a door that didn't need opening?
***
I read something last week and it made sense to me: people want other people to do well in life but not too well. I've never won a raffle or prize or lottery draw, and I can't help but wonder how it must feel. One moment you're just plain old you, and then whaam, you're a winner and now everyone hates you and wants your money. It must be bittersweet. You hear all those stories about how big lottery winners' lives are ruined by winning, but that's not an urban legend. It's pretty much the norm. Be careful what you wish for and, while you're doing so, be sure to use the numbers between thirty-two and forty-nine.
”
”
Douglas Coupland (Bit Rot)
“
Medicine once consisted of the knowledge of a few simples, to stop the flow of blood, or to heal wounds; then by degrees it reached its present stage of complicated variety. No wonder that in early days medicine had less to do! Men's bodies were still sound and strong; their food was light and not spoiled by art and luxury, whereas when they began to seek dishes not for the sake of removing, but of rousing, the appetite, and devised countless sauces to whet their gluttony, – then what before was nourishment to a hungry man became a burden to the full stomach. 16. Thence come paleness, and a trembling of wine-sodden muscles, and a repulsive thinness, due rather to indigestion than to hunger. Thence weak tottering steps, and a reeling gait just like that of drunkenness. Thence dropsy, spreading under the entire skin, and the belly growing to a paunch through an ill habit of taking more than it can hold. Thence yellow jaundice, discoloured countenances, and bodies that rot inwardly, and fingers that grow knotty when the joints stiffen, and muscles that are numbed and without power of feeling, and palpitation of the heart with its ceaseless pounding. 17. Why need I mention dizziness? Or speak of pain in the eye and in the ear, itching and aching[11] in the fevered brain, and internal ulcers throughout the digestive system? Besides these, there are countless kinds of fever, some acute in their malignity, others creeping upon us with subtle damage, and still others which approach us with chills and severe ague. 18. Why should I mention the other innumerable diseases, the tortures that result from high living? Men used to be free from such ills, because they had not yet slackened their strength by indulgence, because they had control over themselves, and supplied their own needs.[12] They toughened their bodies by work and real toil, tiring themselves out by running or hunting or tilling the earth. They were refreshed by food in which only a hungry man could take pleasure. Hence, there was no need for all our mighty medical paraphernalia, for so many instruments and pill-boxes. For plain reasons they enjoyed plain health;
”
”
Seneca (Letters from a Stoic)
“
There was a ruined church along the way, an old Methodist meetinghouse, which reared its shambles at the far end of a frost-heaved and hummocked lawn, and when you walked past the view of its glaring, senseless windows your footsteps became very loud in your ears and whatever you had been whistling died on your lips and you thought about how it must be inside the overturned pews, the rotting hymnals, the crumbling altar where only mice now kept the sabbath, and you wondered what might be in there besides mice what madmen, what monsters. Maybe they were peering out at you with yellow reptilian eyes. And maybe one night watching would not be enough; maybe some night that splintered, crazily hung door would be thrown open, and what you saw standing there would drive you to lunacy at one look.
And you couldn’t explain that to your mother and father, who were creatures of the light. No more than you could explain to them how, at the age of three, the spare blanket at the foot of the crib turned into a collection of snakes that lay staring at you with flat and lidless eyes. No child ever conquers those fears, he thought. If a fear cannot be articulated, it can’t be conquered. And the fears locked in small brains are much too large to pass through the orifice of the mouth. Sooner or later you found someone to walk past all the deserted meetinghouses you had to pass between grinning babyhood and grunting senility. Until tonight. Until tonight when you found out that none of the old fears had been staked only tucked away in their tiny, child-sized coffins with a wild rose on top.
”
”
Stephen King ('Salem's Lot)
“
She, you know, she, she attacked my son, and there was a bit of a struggle, and in the end I had to pin her up against the wall with one of the dining room chairs while my son hit her over and over and over again with a baseball bat. And she just wouldn’t quit, and he hit her and hit her, and there were these awful kind of crunching and squishing sounds where he was pulverizing her skull. And her head flattened on the side that he was hitting her but she was still so strong, and I think some of her brains got in my hair and there was this awful stench, this terrible smell of rotting flesh and death and fresh blood.
”
”
Robert E. Howard (The Zombie MEGAPACK ®)
“
We wear our lives
Like costumes
Use bills and coins like props
In an over budget production
That we cannot seem to stop
So it just goes on like this
As if we accept this
As if we've all become
Buddhas of mass production
Our brains rotting
Like teeth
Under the sweet
Unending bliss of false enlightenment.
”
”
Shane L. Koyczan (Remembrance Year)
“
DARE Rap When you SMOKE It’s no JOKE Smoking turns lungs BLACK And causes you to HACK If you go ahead and SMOKE You are going to CROAK If you smoke POT Your brain will ROT When you drink BEER You can’t think CLEAR When you drink BOOZE Your brain will SNOOZE If you take a DRUG You turn into a SLUG When you get HIGH You might try to FLY And you will DIE So if you go to a PARTY Be a SMARTY! Listen to my VOICE Make the right CHOICE If you never drink and DRIVE You have a good chance of staying ALIVE. Shelly Merkes, age 12
”
”
Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for the Kid's Soul: Stories of Courage, Hope and Laughter for Kids ages 8-12 (Chicken Soup for the Soul))
“
Experience without cynicism was a sure sign your brain had dry-rotted and you hadn’t bothered to notice.
”
”
David Baldacci (Divine Justice (Camel Club, #4))
“
...some of the more smug cyclists live in eternal hope that humanity will somehow realize the error of its ways and reject the automobile altogether .... This is not going to happen....never in the history of the world has humanity forfeited an invention that makes our lives profoundly easier, as the car does. Nobody ever said, "This newsprint is making my fingers filthy. I'm going back to smoke signals." TV was supposed to rot your brain and ruin your eyes, but instead of going away it only got bigger and flatter, and we now have like four hundred channels instead of three. And airplanes are still the world's preferred mode of very-long-distance travel, even though terrorists still try to fly them into buildings and we now have to be dismantled into our component atoms, sifted through, and reassembled in order to board them. So if we have yet to jettison these abominations, why would people give up their cars either?
”
”
BikeSnobNYC
“
And if I were criticizing human bodies as they were a million years ago, the kind of body I had, as though they were machines somebody intended to put on the market, I would have two main points to make — one of which I have surely made by now in my story: “The brain is much too big to be practical.” The other would be: “Something is always going wrong with our teeth. They don’t last anything like a lifetime, usually. What chain of events in evolution should we thank for our mouthfuls of rotting crockery?
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Galápagos)
“
But it was pointless, it was stupid; he thought about thoughtless things. If I were a seabird . . . but how could you be a seabird? If you were a seabird your brain would be tiny and stupid and you would love half-rotted fish guts and tweaking the eyes out of little grazing animals; you would know no poetry and you could never appreciate flying as fully as the human on the ground yearning to be you. If you wanted to be a seabird you deserved to be one.
”
”
Iain M. Banks (Use of Weapons (Culture, #3))
“
So, teach us something worth knowing, bring us back what we've forgot, just do your best, we'll do the rest, and learn until our brains all rot...
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
“
For several months, about all I did was talk to addicts, counselors, and cops around the country—over the phone because the pandemic restricted travel. Meth was overshadowed by the opioid epidemic. But the people I spoke to told me stories nearly identical to Eric’s. This new meth itself was quickly, intensely damaging people’s brains. The symptoms were always the same—violent paranoia, hallucinations, figures always lurking in the shadows, isolation, rotted and abscessed dental work, uncontrollable limbs, massive memory loss, jumbled speech, and, almost always, homelessness. It was creating a swath of people nationwide who, while on meth and for a good period afterward, were mentally ill and all but untreatable by usual methods of drug rehabilitation. Ephedrine-made meth wasn’t good for the brain, but it was nothing like this. Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are afflictions that begin in the young. Now people in their thirties and forties were going mad. The new meth was also deadly in a way ephedrine meth was not. It was killing young people with congestive heart failure, a disease common to people over sixty-five.
”
”
Sam Quinones (The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth)
“
Did syphilis rot your brain?’ Paisley glowers at her. ‘If I see anyone touch a phone, I’ll break the phone and then their fingers in that order. Is that clear?
”
”
Juno Dawson (Wonderland: The London Collection)
“
Assuming TV really did rot their brains, how would they be in a position to know? Its intrinsic biases—toward flash over illumination, sound bites over substance, the methods of advertising over the methods of persuasion—have become their basic intuitions. When subjective evaluation fails, objective measures must be consulted, and the most glaring objective consequence of the boomers’ embrace of mass culture has been the death of both folk culture and high culture. … During the cold war, the Communist leaders of the Eastern bloc did their best to keep pop culture out of their countries, because they believed that Western entertainment would put their children in thrall to decadent bourgeois values—and they were right.
”
”
Helen Andrews (Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster)
“
You did not need rescuing, then, it seems," he said, a wry twist in his smile. "Stregas rescue themselves in all the stories."
"Stregas?"
"Witches," he clarified.
"Oh." Sure, I'd been hoping for something a little more complimentary but- he believed me, without even a flicker of doubt. Maybe all those years of sneaking pulpy monster stories when he was supposed to be manning the shop counter had rotted his brain just like his mother said they would. Maybe he just trusted me.
Samuel continued, speculatively. "They always end up alone in the stories- witches, I mean- living in the woods or mountains or locked in towers. I suppose it would take a brave man to love a witch, and men are mostly cowards." He looked directly at me as he finished, with a kind of raised-chin boldness that said: I am not a coward.
”
”
Alix E. Harrow (The Ten Thousand Doors of January)
“
Father Lykambes, what is this new silliness?
Are your natural brains wholly rotted?
The neighbors laugh openly at your absurd life
and you persist in chattering like a cricket.
”
”
Archilochus
“
It’s secure,” I whispered, slapping his hand away. “I haven’t forgotten how to do this, you know.” His bright white smile was hidden under his mask, but I knew it was there all the same. “Just double-checking, JoJo. That bougie Academy would rot a lesser girl’s brain.” “Will you two get moving? Christ,” Dom barked in our ears.
”
”
Elizabeth Dear (Storm the Gates (A Knight's Revenge #1))
“
Circulating libraries were denounced as purveyors of pornography and books of brain-rotting triviality.
”
”
Andrew Pettegree (The Library: A Fragile History)
“
The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is. Everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart, and all that will be left of you is what was in your heart.26
”
”
Jim Kwik (Limitless Expanded Edition: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life)
“
I am a zoomer
Bye bye attention span
Hello big brain rot
”
”
Omar Parker (Inebriated Haikus)
“
That I had wasted fifteen years allowing my brain to rot, my creative talents to fester and my beauty to hide under a thick, scratchy blanket of self-doubt and pathetic apathy. The truth was, I had abandoned everything my mother had taught me and spent my entire adult life settling and making do. I had not strived, fought, adventured, embraced, been inspiring or inspired. I had barely laughed. Come on, Ruth. You can waste a whole load more years lamenting the lost ones, or make darn sure you don’t waste another second of the ones you have left. For pity’s sake. You’ve cried enough.
”
”
Beth Moran (We Are Family)
“
You have to be stronger than OCD, physically and mentally. If you’re not, it will eat you alive. It will put you in bed, and you will rot like a vegetable.
”
”
Jeffrey M. Schwartz (Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior)
“
Television rots the mind and turns a brain to cheese until a person cannot think but only see.
”
”
Suzanne Redfearn (Where Butterflies Wander)
“
You read romance novels.” “So?” “So that shit will rot your brain.
”
”
J.T. Geissinger (Fall Into You (Morally Gray, #2))
“
I wanted to puke, and from the intense paint stench that was assaulting my nasal passages. Sage wanted Gaberot, Not Tucker, not Joe, but Gabe. It was all too gross to contemplate. So of course my brain couldn't stop contemplating it.
Sage and Gabe-rot sitting in the tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G!
We worked in silence for a few minutes while I fumed. How could she grill me about Gabe when she was already dating Mr.Perfect? If only Daniel were here to hear all of this instead of sitting back at SDH oblivious.
"So are you and Gabe, like close?" Sage asked.
Ugh!
"Very close," I said, tilting my head to one side,"Incestuous,actually. He's a fabulous kisser.
”
”
Kieran Scott (I Was a Non-Blonde Cheerleader (Cheerleader Trilogy, #1))
“
All of these video games are rotting my brain. I'm gonna go watch T.V. instead
”
”
Parents
“
This is precisely why T2DM, unlike virtually any other disease, affects every single part of the body. Every organ suffers the long-term effects of the excessive sugar load. Your eyes rot – and you go blind. Your kidneys rot – and you need dialysis. You heart rots – and you get heart attacks and heart failure. Your brain rots – and you get Alzheimer’s disease. Your liver rots – and you get fatty liver disease and cirrhosis. Your legs rot – and you get diabetic foot ulcers. Your nerves rot – and you get diabetic neuropathy. No part of your body is spared.
”
”
Tim Noakes (Diabetes Unpacked: Just Science and Sense. No Sugar Coating)
“
The draugr continued, "You say you are the champion? We can settle this easily. Inside that crypt lies Mjölnir. Bring it to me."
"It's a trick," Baldwin hissed.
"Yes, it is a trick," the draugr said. "If the boy is truly a Thorsen, he already knows that. Do you think no one has found that hammer before now? They have. But they cannot lift it. It lies in its bed of stone, and only Thor's true champion and raise it out. Only the living embodiment of the great god himself."
"Uh, isn't that Excalibur?" Baldwin said.
Matt tried to shush him, but Baldwin said, "It is Excalibur. With the stone. I saw the musical." He lowered his voice. "I think his brains are rotting, too. He seems confused."
"The son of Balder, I see," the draugr said. "I would believe you are the living embodiment of Frigg's doomed son. As pleasant and a sun-warmed stone. And just as intelligent."
"Hey!" Baldwin said.
”
”
K.L. Armstrong (Odin's Ravens (The Blackwell Pages, #2))
“
Cheating, especially the mental kind—because when we desire something we shouldn’t, the ravenous hunger for it consumes each fantasy playing through our immoral brains—can rot a relationship, sending its skeleton to the graveyard of “what should have been.
”
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Gail McHugh (Amber to Ashes (Torn Hearts, #1))
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Too much knowledge rots the brain. Unless it is the practical sort, such as how to fix my car or operate on my heart. Sometimes I think the more educated a person becomes the more useless he is to the rest of us. I
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Marion G. Harmon (Wearing the Cape (Wearing the Cape, #1))
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This is how it goes in life: sometimes you’re born with a cleft palette or rickets, like my bow-legged Granddaddy, or a touch short on brains, like my Great Aunt Cal who everyone called ‘Stool.’ Me? I’m a double hitter. In addition to being what folks call “large boned,” I came into this world with homosexual tendencies—though back then I thought of it only as my strange, strong affections for some female friends, having no such notion of “homosexual tendencies” as a thing, at least not in Midland, Texas.
Notions of this nature found footing in me eight months before I ran away to work in the kitchen at Sugarland Prison, when I got a job at the egg store. The egg store was all wood. Wood floors, wood ceiling beams, wood shelves—that rugged, knotty, reddish wood. The simple kind of wood they used to bury folks in before the floods, when rotting coffins popped from the ground like splinters and dead bodies dropped out in maggoty heaps.
The egg store smelled like wood, too, which I liked. That and just the tiniest hint of smoke from Bibby’s metal pork smoker two streets over. I swear he ran that thing day and night, crazy redneck. And that’s where I fell in love for the first time, there in the egg store that smelled like wood and smoked pig fat.
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Tammy Lynne Stoner (Sugar Land)
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You can watch television," she said.
"Brain rot," I said. "I have a book."
"Do you like it?"
"Yeah. It's kind of hard. Not the words. But, you know, what it's about. I guess Mexicans aren't the only poor people in the world.
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Bejamin Alire Sáenz
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A stink. A stench. A foulness in her mind, dreadful and unforgiving. A compost of horrible ideas and rotted thoughts that made her want to take our her brain and wash it.
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Terry Pratchett (I Shall Wear Midnight (Discworld, #38; Tiffany Aching, #4))
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Carl finds it disgusting, this optimism. "I have only to talk about a meal," he says, "and you're radiant!" It's a fact. The mere thought of a meal -- another meal -- rejuvenates me. A meal! That means something to go on -- a few solid hours of work, an erection possibly. I don't deny it. I have health, good, solid, animal health. The only thing that stands between me and a future is a meal, another meal.
As for Carl, he's not himself these days. He's upset, his nerves are jangled. He says he's ill, and I believe him, but I don't feel badly about it. I can't. In fact, it makes me laugh. And that offends him, of course. Everything wounds him -- my laughter, my hunger, my persistence, my insouciance, everything. One day he wants to blow his brains out because he can't stand this lousy hole of Europe any more; the next day he talks of going to Arizona "where they look you square in the eye." "Do it!" I say. "Do one thing or the other, you bastard, but don't try to cloud my healthy eye with your melancholy breath!" But that's just it! In Europe one gets used to doing nothing. You sit on your ass and whine all day. You get contaminated. You rot. Fundamentally Carl is a snob, an aristocratic little prick who lives in a dementia praecox92 kingdom all his own. "I hate Paris!" he whines. "All these stupid people playing cards all day... look at them! And this writing! What's the use of putting words together? I can be a writer without writing, can't I? What does it prove if I write book? What do we want with books anyway?There are too many books already...
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Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer (Tropic, #1))
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But a brain a day keeps the rotting away,
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Anonymous
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Spiders are by no means the only creatures that need to fear the parasitic wasps’ coercive tactics. And drugs are not the wasps’ only weapons for gaining the compliance of their victims. Ampulex compressa, better known as the jewel wasp because of its iridescent blue-green sheen, performs neurosurgery to achieve its aims. Its quarry is the annoyingly familiar American cockroach (Periplaneta americana). Not to be confused with the comparatively diminutive German roach common up north, this species prefers warmer climes and can grow as big as a mouse. Though dwarfed in stature by its prey, a female jewel wasp that has caught the scent of an American roach will aggressively pursue and attack it—even if that means following the fleeing insect into a house. The roach puts up a mighty struggle, flailing its legs and tucking in its head to fend off the attack, but usually to no avail. With lightning speed, the wasp stings the roach’s midsection, injecting an agent that will temporarily paralyze it so that the behemoth will stay still for the delicate procedure to follow. Like an evil doctor wielding a syringe, she again inserts her stinger, this time into the roach’s brain, and gingerly moves it around for half a minute or so until she finds exactly the right spot, whereupon she injects a venom. Shortly thereafter, the paralytic agent delivered by the first sting wears off. In spite of having full use of its limbs and the same ability to sense its surroundings as any normal roach, it’s strangely submissive. The venom, according to Frederic Libersat, a neuroethologist at Ben-Gurion University in Israel, has turned the roach into a “zombie” that will henceforth take its orders from the wasp and willingly tolerate her abuse. Indeed, the roach doesn’t protest in the least when she twists off part of one of its antennae with her powerful mandible and proceeds to suck the liquid oozing from it like soda from a straw. The wasp then does the same thing to its other antenna and, assured that the roach will go nowhere, leaves it alone for about twenty minutes as she searches for a burrow where she’ll lay an egg to be nourished by the roach. Meanwhile, her brainwashed slave busies itself grooming—picking fungal spores, tiny worms, and other parasites off itself—providing a sterile surface for the wasp to glue its egg. When the wasp returns, she seizes the roach by the stump of one of its antennae and “walks it like a dog on a leash to her burrow,” said Libersat. Thanks to its cooperation, she doesn’t have to waste energy dragging the massive roach. Equally important, he said, she doesn’t “need to paralyze all the respiratory system, so the thing will stay alive and fresh. Her larvae need to feed five or six days on this fresh meat, which you don’t want to rot.” The
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Kathleen McAuliffe (This Is Your Brain On Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society)
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Janik felt ennui cooling his warmth like a shadow blocking his sunshine. His interests were slowly dying as heartbreak and the what-ifs rotted his brain. With increasing frequency, his unintentional recollection of some squandered opportunity or other from his past clamped itself upon him like a seizure, the skeleton fingers of regret itself gliding toward his ear holes to poke at his head through his mind. He shivered.
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Maxximillian Dafoe (Mollyville: Humble Beginnings: Dystopian Fantasy for the Expatriate That Lives Within You)