Gonzales Quotes

You broke her heart in person—you fix it in person!

A flower bloomed already wilting. Beginning its life with an early ending.

Survival is the celebration of choosing life over death. We know we're going to die. We all die. But survival is saying: perhaps not today. In that sense, survivors don't defeat death, they come to terms with it.

The word 'experienced' often refers to someone who's gotten away with doing the wrong thing more frequently than you have.

Live with Fulfillment, Serve with Passion so in this Lifetime you will have the ablility to Die with NO Regrets.

And life was too short to play chicken with something as important as the person you loved.

One must simply take the days of their lives as they happen. If you spend time worrying over what is to come, which may or may not happen, then you will only be wasting precious days you will wish in the future you could have cherished a bit longer.

That’s the beautiful thing about the universe. It puts you through trials, but it never gives you anything you can’t handle. We grow from these things.

To deal with reality you must first recognize it as such.

We don't understand the power of nature and the world because we don't live with it. Our environment is designed to sustain us. We are the domestic pets of a human zoo called civilization.

Eventually, I’ll grow sick and perish. Die on the floor, a young girl—who even when in the presence of company, still feels the loneliness that looms over her heart.

Everyone wants the world to see them as they are. The truth isn’t the problem. The problem is that the world doesn’t always make the truth safe for us to share.

Maybe our Happily Ever After hadn't worked on the first shot. And maybe Happily Ever Afters weren't a singular event. Maybe they were something you had to work at, and build, and never give up on, as long as they were something you still wanted.

Bureaucracies force us to practice nonsense. And if you rehearse nonsense, you may one day find yourself the victim of it.

But if they keep accidentally ripping your heart out over and over again, doesn't mean they're terrible people, but it probably means you're better off getting to a distance where they can't keep doing that. Accidentally or not.

The plan, a memory of the future, tries on reality to see if it fits.

Apathy is incompatible with hate. Love works okay.

I put the sexy in dyslexia.

The sun beams are always there. The trick is in seeing them.

The summit is not the only place on the mountain.

She had the air of someone who’d won a battle with the patriarchy.

Well, when someone you love needs you, you step up, right?

I fled. I fled like a bigot dodging the concept of equality.

And I understand my sisters when they say every woman has a story that's been told a maxim of one soul, maybe less And that is why you'll never hear me call a woman slut, bitch or a dyke, No matter what she does, because I do not blame her I blame the men who have emotionally and physically raped her, I blame these corporations whose images tell them they hate her, And I put my arms on her shoulder and tell her how great to life and to God that SHE created her

But what is the way forward? I know what it isn't. It's not, as we once believed, plenty to eat and a home with all the modern conveniences. It's not a 2,000-mile-long wall to keep Mexicans out or more accurate weapons to kill them. It's not a better low-fat meal or a faster computer speed. It's not a deodorant, a car, a soft drink, a skin cream. The way forward is found on a path through the wilderness of the head and heart---reason and emotion. Thinking, knowing, understanding.

Once you've learned shame, it settles into your skin like a tattoo. You can cover it up, but you can't scrub off the sense of inadequacy.

It'll get easier. That's the beautiful thing about the universe. It puts you through trials, but it never gives you anything you can't handle. We grow from these things.

The freedom to be ourselves, and express whatever truest version of ourselves we know of to the world as we see fit, is the most important freedom we have.

For the first time, the very very first time, I really believed them. That my relationship status did not change me. And that even if other people didn't agree, every single person in this room had my back without hesitation. I was with them and they were with me and we were with each other. A community within a community within a community. No questions asked. No proof needed. No valid form of identification required. We just belonged because we belonged.

I don’t want to be the kind of person who’s so caught up in the past that she wastes her present and ruins her future.

What does brace mean, anyway? Brace. Such an odd word. It comes from the Latin brachium, meaning arm. It means, as its heart, to embrace. It was a hug. A hug good-bye.

To survive, you must develop secondary emotions that function in a strategic balance with reason.

Alone in here, I could be any of that. I could feel every negative, terrible, aching feeling at once, and I didn't have to be self-conscious about it or try to put on a mask so someone else didn't feel dragged down.

But I've never been allowed to cry. My whole life I was taught that crying is a waste of time. Don't cry. Fix it. Sort it out. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. But I can't.

It's been so hard for me to believe that being adored doesn't mean I'm one mistake away from being despised.

It’ll be okay. No matter what happens, you have me. That’s not going to change. Not as long as you still want me.” … “I’ll always wat you.” “Then you’ll always have me.

Yeah, fine as a man who’s been gently corrected on the internet,

And maybe Happily Ever Afters weren’t a singular event. Maybe they were something you had to work at, and build, and never give up on, as long as they were something you still wanted.

Setting aside the messiness of which accents were considered sexy in which cultures and why, accents in general were nature’s way of saying, “Procreate with that one, their gene code must be varied as fuck.” Few things, it seemed, could turn a person on as quickly as the subconscious realization they almost certainly weren’t flirting with a blood relative.

To lose everything at such a glorious eternity is far sweeter than to win by plodding through a cautious, painless, featureless life.

So, Anna, did you know That when you kill yourself Those you say you love, They die too?

You'd be surprised how easy it is to talk an anxiously attached person down from their spiral if you don't leave them in silence to imagine the worst.

Problem is, future-me is about to become present-me. I knew there was a flaw in the plan.

Brougham arrived at Mom’s house to join in on my birthday cake holding a plate of white bread coated in sugar sprinkles, for some reason.

At the crux of it, everyone wants the world to see them as they are. The truth isn’t the problem. The problem is that the world doesn’t always make the truth safe for us to share.

I’ll do whatever I have to do to protect this.

People don't grow and become better. If they hurt you once, they will continue to hurt you.

A long pause. Long pauses are never good. One day, I would write a thesis on the history of long pauses, and the hurt feelings that followed them 200 percent of the time. This was just like the time in tenth grade, when I shaved one side of my head and asked Ryan how it looked at school the next day. Except this long pause was lasting longer, and oh God, this was going to really stab, wasn’t it? Fuck long pauses. Motion to ban them from social interactions, please.

Mom. This didn’t happen to teach us all a lesson and help us to grow.” She darkened. “Ollie, that’s not what I meant and you know it.” “This isn’t beautiful. It’s ugly, and pointless.

I am constantly surrounded by a display of natural wonders...It is beauty surrounded by ugly fear. I write in my log that it's a view of heaven from a seat in hell. (survivor after 53 days at sea)

Can I confess something?” Hearing those words come out of Lara’s mouth felt odd. Like a vegetarian asking you to pass the meatballs, or a mermaid asking to borrow your shoes. Guilt + Lara = system error.

Of all the terrifying decisions I’d had to make this year, among all the missteps and bad calls and failed attempts—agreeing to help Alexander Brougham was the most perfectly right decision I’d ever made.

My body chose her to be my home. It recognizes her as mine … She feels like my safe place. She feels like finding a missing part of my soul that was floating around in space until it finally burst into my orbit, and I latched on to it. I latched on to her.

And the only answer I know is That no child should give up on life. Math deals in absolutes. But life is the most absolute of all.

Somehow, I feel almost blinded myself. And I am forever left to wonder Whether telling you how truly special You were Might have made a difference.

With the illusion that we have dominion over the earth we conclude we have nothing to fear.

Great. My life has suddenly become a young-adult novel.

If anyone could listen to my silence and hear the words I wanted to speak, it was him.

We think we believe what we know, but we only truly believe what we feel.

His weird little bastard accent had already been growing on me, but now that I was aware of its history, even more so.

I have to treat a shirtless Zach like Medusa. No looking, on pain of death

Let me be clear, Gwendolyn. I would rather be swallowed up into the bowels of hell and enter an arrangement with the fallen angel Lucifer than date Jordy Miller again.

Everyone who dies out there dies of confusion.

The smile he gives me kind of makes my life.

Mama, Ollie taught me how to play ‘Let It Go’ on guitar,” Crista piped up in a muffled voice as she pulled her pajama shirt over her head. Aunt Linda shot me a look that was half sheer terror, half witch hunt. The face of someone at peak Frozen saturation. I didn’t, I swear, I mouthed, making chopping motions by my neck.

Are you kids going to be out for a while?" Mr. Tavares asked. Out as in, out of the closet, or out as in, our celebrating? "Yeah-- the rest of the team is partying at Reese's house. I think Matt and Darnell want to swing by," said Will. Okay, yup, out celebrating. Glad I didn't reply with "I'm planning on being out permanently," then.

He let out his breath like every bit of tension in his body seeped out with it. “I love you, too. I think I always did. I was just scared of what saying that might mean.” “And now you’re not?” “Not even a bit, Ollie.

You're my son. If they mess with you, they mess with me. The words were meant to be supportive, but I was left feeling confused, and a little empty. Because the message received was, I'm the only one who's allowed to hurt and limit you.

The game doesn't always go your way. Forget fair. Feel forgotten. But damn it, Anna, You don't stop playing.

Choking is about thinking too much. Panic is about thinking too little.

Racism is a big problem Created by small minds

some see us more clearly. They see us, and they stay. They see us, and yet they seem to like us more than anyone does.

You want me to shout, 'Fuck this, it sucks,' in the middle of Disneyland? The Happiest Place on Earth?

Shit happens, and if we just want to restrict ourselves to things where shit can't happen... we're not going to do anything very interesting.

Ruben responds with a thumbs-up, which I know is just to annoy me. I’ve ranted to him before about how I think they’re passive-aggressive.

He places a firm hand on my thigh to steady himself as he takes a picture of the scenery, because he wants me to spontaneously combust, apparently.

Zach’s shirtless in my hotel room, which is both amazing, and a travesty on multiple levels. Essentially, I’m doing my very best not to stare. And it’s, uh, hard.

Statistically, the most amazing events that would ever happen in the world would probably happen sometime in the far future, and I’d never get to know about it. So many beautiful, wonderful things would happen one day, in a world that didn’t have me in it. And I didn’t want the world to keep going if I wasn’t in it.

I’m sure it’s common to get such miniscule crushes on other people. It doesn’t mean I’m queer. If I felt the way about guys that I felt about guys I’d know it. … If he was a girl, I’d have known I’d found the next person I’m into. But it’s Ruben. My very male best friend and band mate. So, essentially, what the fuck?

I could always accept not being the prettiest or the smartest Because I had the best of friends. A and A they called us. But, Anna, somehow, I failed you. And now I've lost the best part of Me.

But nothing happened there now of a nature to provoke a disturbance. There were no complaints to the management or the police, and the dark glory of the upper galleries was a legend in such memories as that of the late Emiel Kroger and the present Pablo Gonzales, and one by one, of course, those memories died out and the legend died out with them. Places like the Joy Rio and the legends about them make one more than usually aware of the short bloom and the long fading out of things. ("The Mysteries of the Joy Rio")

The V-2’s directional system was notoriously erratic. In May 1947, a V-2 launched from White Sands Proving Ground headed south instead of north, missing downtown Juarez, Mexico, by 3 miles. The Mexican government’s response to the American bombing was admirably laid back. General Enrique Diaz Gonzales and Consul General Raul Michel met with United States officials, who issued apologies and an invitation to come to “the next rocket shoot” at White Sands. The Mexican citizenry was similarly nonchalant. “Bomb Blast Fails to Halt Spring Fiesta,” said the El Paso Times headline, noting that “many thought the explosion was a cannon fired for the opening of the fiesta.

But she hadn't chosen me. She was never going to. And it didn't matter how caring I was, or how much effort I put into my hair and makeup, or how much time I put in. It was me, as I was, that wasn't doing it for her. There wasn't anything I could do to change that. And that made me feel like there was something inherently not good enough about me.

Like … most of the school has figured out you’re gay.” “Oh. Interesting. I haven’t met most of the school, so don’t know how they managed that.” “Yeah, but…” I knew what he was getting at. It was fine. Whatever. It’s not like it was a state secret or anything. And hey, if people guessed, it saved me having to have a discussion about my sexual preferences with people who didn’t even know if I preferred ham or peanut butter on my sandwiches. For reference, the answer was, “both, simultaneously.

The maddening thing for someone with a Western scientific turn of mind is that it’s not what’s in your pack that separates the quick from the dead. It’s not even what’s in your mind. Corny as it sounds, it’s what’s in your heart.

The thing about your dreams coming true is that, for a gold-spun moment, you catch a glimpse of what life could be like. Then when you lose it, and you crash back to reality, it’s from such a great height, all you can do is lie there, winded and bruised, while you come to terms with the idea that a happiness like that isn’t meant for you.

The world we imagine seems as real as the ones we’ve experienced. We suffuse the model with the emotional values of past realities. And in the thrall of that vision (call it “the plan,” writ large), we go forth and take action. If things don’t go according to the plan, revising such a robust model may be difficult. In an environment that has high objective hazards, the longer it takes to dislodge the imagined world in favor of the real one, the greater the risk. In nature, adaptation is important; the plan is not. It’s a Zen thing. We must plan. But we must be able to let go of the plan, too.

I slow my step as a spark of realization pricks in the back of my mind. Shut it down. Crush the thought. Is the truth that I don't get strong crushes on guys the way I get on girls? Or is the truth that whenever those crushes start to poke their heads up, I squash them and ignore them?

I’ve loved you probably from the first moment that I met you and I will love you until my last breath leaves. I fell in love with you the first time you smiled at me and only realized the truth of it the night you danced with me under the street lamp. You are the first person I think of each morning and the last person that I want to see before I close my eyes at night. You smell like donuts and coffee … And you have a smile that takes my breath away. You bowl me over with your sense of humor and your random comments and you inspire me with your bravery in the face of all that you’ve endured.

I was fairly sure Lara buying me a present was listed as an end of times sign in the Bible, between false prophets and stars falling from the sky. Which was terrible news for humanity, but it did brighten my night up a little. “You did? Oh … I didn’t get you anything.” “We’re playing swapsies with oppressive gender roles tonight. That’s the theme of this stupid dance, right?” she asked. “Anyway. Here.

Since September, I sat one seat behind Anna in algebra. Passed papers to her every day. Studied for tons of tests together. Though it often seemed impossible, Eventually, We always found the unknown for X. But not this time. This equation Bounces against my brain. And sneers at all attempted answers. I know I'll re-examine the variables, And reanalyze the unknowns, maybe forever. But It won't matter. Because, Anna- I know I'll never figure out Y. Y you didn't want to live- And Y I never noticed.

It’s like an Irish family. They fight like hell among themselves. They want nothing to do with each other. But you throw a disaster at them, and they’re all shoulder to shoulder and they’ll do whatever it takes. They don’t stop for one minute to think what their personal cost or toll is going to be in it, they just do it.

Betwixt and between,” I said. “That’s the worst.” “Is that a poem?” Niamh asked. “Darnell is an idiot,” Lara said, pointing a french fry menacingly at Niamh. “Besides, the problem isn’t the city. If he got a job offer there I bet you he’d move in a heartbeat. He’s just intimidated by the thought of following around a strong woman while she chases her career instead of the other way around.” “Preach!” said Niamh, raising her Diet Coke in a toast.

Helping someone else is the best way to ensure your own survival. It takes you out of yourself. It helps you to rise above your fears. Now you’re a rescuer, not a victim. And seeing how your leadership and skill buoy others up gives you more focus and energy to persevere. The cycle reinforces itself: You buoy them up, and their response buoys you up. Many people who survive alone report that they were doing it for someone else (a wife, boyfriend, mother, son) back home.

The perfect adventure shouldn’t be that much more hazardous in a real sense than ordinary life, for that invisible rope that holds us here can always break. We can live a life of bored caution and die of cancer. Better to take the adventure, minimize the risks, get the information, and then go forward in the knowledge that we’ve done everything we can. No,

I’m out to everyone I want to be out to, but that doesn’t mean that, magically, everyone I meet ever again can just tell. Coming out didn’t plaster BISEXUAL across my forehead like we’re in a game of Celebrity. And I’m yet to pick up the habit of introducing myself to people as “Maya the bisexual,” even though it’d probably simplify things. So, it’s more of a “wait for it to come up in conversation” sort of deal most of the time.

Sublime Books The Known World, by Edward P. Jones The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro A Thousand Trails Home, by Seth Kantner House Made of Dawn, by N. Scott Momaday Faithful and Virtuous Night, by Louise Glück The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy, by Robert Bly The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman Unfortunately, It Was Paradise, by Mahmoud Darwish Collected Fictions, by Jorge Luis Borges, trans. Andrew Hurley The Xenogenesis Trilogy, by Octavia E. Butler Map: Collected and Last Poems, by Wisława Szymborska In the Lateness of the World, by Carolyn Forché Angels, by Denis Johnson Postcolonial Love Poem, by Natalie Diaz Hope Against Hope, by Nadezhda Mandelstam Exhalation, by Ted Chaing Strange Empire, by Joseph Kinsey Howard Tookie’s Pandemic Reading Deep Survival, by Laurence Gonzales The Lost City of the Monkey God, by Douglas Preston The House of Broken Angels, by Luis Alberto Urrea The Heartsong of Charging Elk, by James Welch Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, by Elisabeth Tova Bailey Let’s Take the Long Way Home, by Gail Caldwell The Aubrey/Maturin Novels, by Patrick O’Brian The Ibis Trilogy, by Amitav Ghosh The Golden Wolf Saga, by Linnea Hartsuyker Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky Coyote Warrior, by Paul VanDevelder Incarceration Felon, by Reginald Dwayne Betts Against the Loveless World, by Susan Abulhawa Waiting for an Echo, by Christine Montross, M.D. The Mars Room, by Rachel Kushner The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander This Is Where, by Louise K. Waakaa’igan I Will Never See the World Again, by Ahmet Altan Sorrow Mountain, by Ani Pachen and Adelaide Donnelley American Prison, by Shane Bauer Solitary, by Albert Woodfox Are Prisons Obsolete?, by Angela Y. Davis 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, by Ai Weiwei Books contain everything worth knowing except what ultimately matters. —Tookie * * * If you are interested in the books on these lists, please seek them out at your local independent bookstore. Miigwech! Acknowledgments

God, what I wouldn’t give to live in a fairytale, sometimes. Or even just a romantic comedy. In them, this wouldn’t fly. Like, imagine if Prince Charming had picked up the glass slipper and decided the city was too big to scour it for someone who fit the damn thing? Or if Prince Phillip saw Maleficent blowing fire all over the forest and went nope, fuck that, too risky? Or if Prince Eric was all like, “Hmm, I could fight the giant octopus sea witch from my nightmares, but then I could also sail home and return to eating fish I now know are sentient, safe in denial and cognitive goddamn dissonance!”? But they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t have done any of that, because in stories guys fight. They fight for the person they care about, and they don't give up, ever.

See, the thing is that happiness is a whore. I’ve never met a more disloyal emotion in my life. Nothing like misery, which proposes to you on the first date. Yet, like a mistress I swear off every time, all happiness has to do is peek its head around the corner, contrite and apologetic, and I give myself over to it completely. It’s transient and fleeting, and I know it won’t still be in my bed the next morning, but while I have it, it’s everything. That night, it was everything.

Write a two-page reflection about your life. What do you like about it? What don’t you like about it? What do you live for? There’s a French term for the latter question. Raison d ’être. It means “reason for being.” My mum used to say that Elliot and I were her raison d’être. Mum had a reason, now she lacks a being. I have a being, I just lack a reason. I live because of the law of inertia. An object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. If I were to reflect on my life, I would say it’s like being engulfed in quicksand, and as much as I want to get out, I slowly sink deeper, towards an inevitable end. I want someone to pull me out, but I don’t know how they can. Their only reactions are to stand on dry land and watch me with concerned expressions, urging me to just walk like they are. Living is being in the middle of a dark tunnel, claustrophobic and boxed in, and feeling something closing in behind you, and realising you can only beat it by running. But the tunnel never ends, and you come to realise that you can’t run forever. You go for as long as you possibly can, hoping to God that you’ll see a light before you can’t run anymore. You desperately want to live. But everyone has their limit. And when you eventually hit yours, there’s nothing more you can do. Life is temporary. Nothing is certain about it except for the fact that it will end. It can end on your terms or as a surprise. The thing is . . . I don’t like surprises.