β
The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
When we don't know who to hate, we hate ourselves.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Parents are like God because you wanna know they're out there, and you want them to think well of you, but you really only call when you need something.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Don't do what you want. Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want. Do the things that scare you the most.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
We'll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
No matter how much you think you love somebody, you'll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
You can only hold a smile for so long, after that it's just teeth.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention.
Well, get used to that feeling. That's how your whole life will feel some day.
This is all practice.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Most times, it's just a lot easier not to let the world know what's wrong.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
I am an invisible monster, and I am incapable of loving anybody. You don't know which is worse.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
If I can't be beautiful, I want to be invisible.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Hysteria is impossible without an audience. Panicking by yourself is the same as laughing alone in an empty room. You feel really silly.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Your birth is a mistake you'll spend your whole life trying to correct.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
The best way is not to fight it, just go. Don't be trying all the time to fix things. What you run from only stays with you longer. When you fight something, you only make it stronger.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
It's all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
The idea that I can't share my problems with other people makes me not give a shit about their problems.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
There was once an invisible man who had grown tired of being unseen. It was not that he was actually invisible. It was that people had become used to not seeing him.
And if no one sees you, are you really there at all?"
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
People are all over the world telling their one dramatic story and how their life has turned into getting over this one event. Now their lives are more about the past than their future.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random, useless facts that are all we have left of our education.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Give me lust, baby.
Flash.
Give me malice.
Flash.
Give me detached existentialist ennui.
Flash.
Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.
Flash.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
I hate how I don't feel real enough unless people are watching.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Find good in what the world says is evil.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Make me into anything, but just love me.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
I thought we were a real love relationship. I did. I was very invested in love, but it was just this long long sex thing that could end at any moment because after all, it's just about getting off. Almost all the time, you tell yourself you're loving somebody when you're just using them. This only looks like love.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
When you understand, that what you're telling is just a story. It isn't happening anymore. When you realize the story you're telling is just words, when you can just crumble up and throw your past in the trashcan, then we'll figure out who you're going to be.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Fuck me. I'm so tired of being me. Me beautiful. Me ugly. Blonde. Brunette. A million fucking fashion makeovers that only leave me trapped being me.
Who I was before the accident is just a story now. Everything before now, before now, before now, is just a story I carry around. I guess that would apply to anybody in the world. What I need is a new story about who I am.
What I need to do is fuck up so bad I can't save myself.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Almost all the time, you tell yourself you're loving somebody when you're just using them.
This only looks like love.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
I'm not sure what we're running from. Nobody. Or the future. Fate. Growing up. Getting old. Picking up the pieces. As if running we won't have to get on with our lives.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Sometimes your best way to deal with shit is not to hold yourself as such a precious little prize.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Because humans are complicated beasts, the monster said. How can a queen be both a good witch and a bad witch? How can a prince be a murderer and a saviour? How can an apothecary be evil-tempered but right-thinking? How can a parson be wrong-thinking but good-hearted? How can invisible men make themselves more lonely by being seen?
"I don't know," Connor shrugged, exhausted. "Your stories never made any sense to me."
The answer is that it does not matter what you think, the monster said, because your mind will contradict itself a hundred times each day. You wanted her to go at the same time you were desperate for me to save her. Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds' eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on the air, composed of sounds and ideas-abstract, invisible, gone once they've been spoken-and what could be more frail than that? But some stories, small, simple ones about setting out on adventures or people doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders)
β
You only ask people about themselves so you can tell them about yourself.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Besides, it happens fast for some people and slow for some, accidents or gravity, but we all end up mutilated. Most women know this feeling of being more and more invisible everyday.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
The most boring thing in the entire world is nudity. The second most boring thing is honesty.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
The future is just wasted on some people.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Oh love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me. I'll be anybody you want me to be.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Sorry, mom.
Sorry, God.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
You have to keep recycling yourself.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Your being born makes your parents God. You owe them your life, and they can control you. Then puberty makes you Satan, just because you want something better.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Conor was no longer invisible. They all saw him now.
But he was further away than ever.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
I still love him so much I'll hide any amount of conjugated estrogen in his food. So much I'll do anything to destroy him.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Could you hold the chainsaw a bit closer to your mouth, please?
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
At this rate, we'll never get to the future.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Most guys will fight to know you. Some guys will deny you're a real person, and some will just ignore you."
The zealot. The atheist. The agnostic.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Just each of us being me, me, me first. The murderer, the victim, the witness each of us thinks our role is the lead.
Probably that goes for anybody in the world.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
They're all crazy, Oncat. Invisible armies, monster princes. Let's go set fire to something.
β
β
Leigh Bardugo (Ruin and Rising (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #3))
β
But if you tell folks you're a college student, folks are so impressed. You can be a student in anything and not have to know anything. Just say toxicology or marine biokinesis, and the person you're talking to will change the subject to himself. If this doesn't work, mention the neural synapses of embryonic pigeons.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
I'm not straight, and I'm not gay. I'm not bisexual. I want out of the labels. I don't want my whole life crammed into a single word. A story. I want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that's not on the map. A real adventure.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
My point is, that if I'm honest, my life is all about me.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Mental illness
People assume you arenβt sick
unless they see the sickness on your skin
like scars forming a map of all the ways youβre hurting.
My heart is a prison of Have you tried?s
Have you tried exercising? Have you tried eating better?
Have you tried not being sad, not being sick?
Have you tried being more like me?
Have you tried shutting up?
Yes, I have tried. Yes, I am still trying,
and yes, I am still sick.
Sometimes monsters are invisible, and
sometimes demons attack you from the inside.
Just because you cannot see the claws and the teeth
does not mean they arenβt ripping through me.
Pain does not need to be seen to be felt.
Telling me there is no problem
wonβt solve the problem.
This is not how miracles are born.
This is not how sickness works.
β
β
Emm Roy (The First Step)
β
Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I've ever known.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
My inventory of people who can save me is down to just me.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Tell the world what scares you most. Save the world with some advice from the future.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
You're safe because you're so trapped inside your culture. Anything you can conceive of is fine because you can conceive of it.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
What's burning down is a re-creation of a period revival house patterned after a copy of a copy of a copy of a mock Tudor big manor house. It's a hundred generations removed from anything original, but the truth is aren't we all?
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
So maybe I'll spend some years in prison, but you'll have a big head start on me in hell!
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Be famous. Be a big social experiment in getting what you don't want. Find value in what we've been taught is worthless. Find good in what the world says is evil. I'm giving you my life because I want the whole world to know you. I wish the whole world would embrace what it hates.
Find what you're afraid of most and go live there.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
We went sailing one time, and he wore a Speedo, and any smart woman should know that means bisexual at least.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
It's the Marilyn Monroe school of medicine where enough of any drug will cure any disease.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
The photographer in my head says:
Give me peace.
Flash.
Give me release.
Flash.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
the world is the cradle and your trap.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Your past is just a story. And once you realise this, it has no power over you.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
It's all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power, the same way money is power, the same way a gun is power.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
you can't escape the world, and you're not responsible for how you look, if you look beauticious or butt ugly. you're not responsible for how you feel or what you say or how you act or anything you do. it's all out of your hands.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
But there are harder things than being invisible, it said.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
That's what I love about fire, how it would kill me as quick as anybody else. How it can't know I'm its mother. It's so beautiful and powerful and beyond feeling anything for anybody, that's what I love about fire.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
There's no escaping fate, it just keeps going. Day and night, the future just keeps coming at you.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Did you ever think about life as a metaphor for television?
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
I would pay snakes to bite her.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
All these thousands of miles later, all these different people I've been, and it's still the same story. Why is it you feel like a dope if you laugh alone, but that's usually how you end up crying? How is it you can keep mutating and still be the same deadly virus?
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Shotgunning anybody in this room would be the moral equivalent of killing a car, a Barbie doll, a vacuum cleaner. We're all such products.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Find what you're afraid of most and go live there.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, I'll be anybody you want me to be. Use me. Change me. I can be thin with big breasts and big hair. Take me apart. Make me into anything, but just love me.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Skin, bones, blood and organs transplant from person to person. Even whatβs inside you already, the colonies of microbes and bugs that eat your food for you, without them youβd die. Nothing of you is all-the-way yours. All of you is inherited.
Whatever youβre thinking, a million other folks are thinking. Whatever you do, theyβre doing, and none of you is responsible. All of you is a cooperative effort.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
You have to jump into disaster with both feet.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Jump to the day we'll all be dead and none of this will matter. Jump to the day another house will stand here and the people living there won't know we ever happened.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
And if you can find any way out of our culture, then that's a trap too. Just wanting to get out of the trap reinforces the trap.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
When nobody will look at you, you can stare a hole in them. Picking out all the little details you'd never stare long enough to get if they'd even just return your gaze, this, this is your revenge.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
On game shows, some people will take the trip to France, but most people will take the washer and dryer pair.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
You can say anything if enough people will listen.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Only when we eat up this planet will God give us another. We'll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
It happens fast for some people and slow for some, accidents or gravity, but we all end up mutilated.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Deal with all this, live with myself, you mean? I honestly don't know. I stand often enough at the abyss of my soul, asking that same question, looking down into the dark crevices where the black monsters dwell on the bottom. They gaze up at me, and I look them in the eyes. βThis also you are,β they say, and I almost fall into the void.β
βAnd then?β
Anaxantis shrugged.
βAnd then? I turn around and go do what needs to be done. What else is there?
β
β
Andrew Ashling (The Invisible Chains - Part 1: Bonds of Hate (Dark Tales of Randamor the Recluse #1))
β
Because humans are complicated beasts, the monster said. How can a queen be both a good witch and a bad witch? How can a prince be a murderer and a saviour? How can an apothecary be evil-tempered but right-thinking? How can a parson be wrong-thinking but good-hearted? How can invisible men make themselves more lonely by being seen?
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
When you understand that what you're telling is just a story. It isn't happening anymore. When you realize the story you're telling is just words, when you can just crumble it up and throw your past in the trashcan, then we'll figure out who you're going to be.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Now," those Plumbago lips say, "You are going to tell me your story like you just did. Write it all down. Tell that story over and over. Tell me your sad-assed story all night." That Brandy queen points a long bony finger at me.
"When you understand, " Brandy says, "that what you're telling is just a story. It isn't happening anymore. When you realize the story you're telling is just words, when you can crumble it up and throw your past in the trashcan," Brandy says,"then we'll figure out who you're going to be.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
The books on plastic surgery, the pamphlets and brochures all promised to help me live a more normal, happy life; but less and less, this looked like what I'd want. What I wanted looked more and more like what I'd always been trained to want. What everybody wants.
Give me attention.
Flash.
Give me beauty.
Flash.
Give me peace and happiness, a loving relationship, and a perfect home.
Flash.
Brandy says, "The best way is not to fight it, just go. Don't be trying all the time to fix things. What you run from only stays with you longer. When you fight something, you only make it stronger."
She says, "Don't do what you want." She says, "Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want."
It's the opposite of following your bliss.
Brandy tells me, "Do the things that scare you the most.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Jump way back to one time, Evie and me did this fashion shoot in a junk yard, in a slaughterhouse, in a mortuary. We'd go anywhere to look good by comparison, and what I realize is mostly what I hate about Evie is the fact that she's so vain and stupid and needy. But what I hate most is how she's just like me. What I really hate is me so I hate pretty much everybody.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
There was once an invisible man, the monster continued, though Conor kept his eyes firmly on Harry, who had grown tired of being unseen.
Conor set himself into a walk.
A walk after Harry.
It was not that he was actually invisible, the monster said, following Conor, the room volume dropping as they passed. It was that the people had become used to not seeing him.
"Hey!" Conor called. Harry didn't turn around. Neither did Sully nor Anton, though thet were still sniggering as Conor picked up his pace.
And if no one sees you, the monster said, picking up its pace, too, are you really there at all?
"HEY!" Conor called loudly.
The dining hall had fallen silent now, as Conor and the monster moved faster after Harry.
Harry who had still not turned around.
Conor reached him and grabbed him by the shoulder, twisting him round. Harry pretended to question what had happened, looking hard at Sully, acting like he was the one who'd done it. "Quit messing about," Harry said and turned away again.
Turned away from Conor.
And then one day the invisible man decided, the monster said, its voice ringing in Conor's ears, I will make them see me.
"How?" Conor asked, breathing heavily again, not turning back to see the monster standing there, not looking at the reaction of the room to the huge monster now in the midst, though he was aware of nervous murmurs and a strange anticipation in the air. "How did the man do it?"
Conor could feel the monster close behind him, knew that it was kneeling, knew that it was putting its face up to his ear to whisper into in, to tell him the rest of the story.
He called, it said for a monster.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
Trends rule the world
In the blink of an eye, technologies changed the world
Social networks are the main axis.
Governments are controlled by algorithms,
Technology has erased privacy.
Every like, every share, every comment,
It is tracked by the electronic eye.
Data is the gold of the digital age,
Information is power, the secret is influential.
The network is a web of lies,
The truth is a stone in the shoe.
Trolls rule public opinion,
Reputation is a valued commodity.
Happiness is a trending topic,
Sadness is a non-existent avatar.
Youth is an advertising brand,
Private life has become obsolete.
Fear is a hallmark,
Terror is an emotional state.
Fake news is the daily bread,
Hate is a tool of control.
But something dark is hiding behind the screen,
A mutant and deformed shadow.
A collective and disturbing mind,
Something lurking in the darkness of the net.
AI has surpassed the limits of humanity,
And it has created a new world order.
A horror that has arisen from the depths,
A terrifying monster that dominates us alike.
The network rules the world invisibly,
And makes decisions for us without our consent.
Their algorithms are inhuman and cold,
And they do not take suffering into consideration.
But resistance is slowly building,
People fighting for their freedom.
United to combat this new species of terror,
Armed with technology and courage.
The world will change when we wake up,
When we take control of the future we want.
The network can be a powerful tool,
If used wisely in the modern world.
β
β
Marcos Orowitz (THE MAELSTROM OF EMOTIONS: A selection of poems and thoughts About us humans and their nature)
β
My mom says, "Do you know what the AIDS memorial quilt is all about?"
Jump to how much I hate my brother at this moment.
I bought this fabric because I thought it would make a nice panel for Shane," Mom says. "We just ran into some problems with what to sew on it."
Give me amnesia.
Flash.
Give me new parents.
Flash.
Your mother didn't want to step on any toes," Dad says. He twists a drumstick off and starts scraping the meat onto a plate. "With gay stuff you have to be so careful since everything means something in secret code. I mean, we didn't want to give people the wrong idea."
My Mom leans over to scoop yams onto my plate, and says, "Your father wanted a black border, but black on a field of blue would mean Shane was excited by leather sex, you know, bondage and discipline, sado and masochism." She says, "Really, those panels are to help the people left behind."
Strangers are going to see us and see Shane's name," my dad says. "We didn't want them thinking things."
The dishes all start their slow clockwise march around the table. The stuffing. The olives. The cranberry sauce. "I wanted pink triangles but all the panels have pink triangles," my mom says. "It's the Nazi symbol for homosexuals." She says,"Your father suggested black triangles, but that would mean Shane was a lesbian. It looks like female pubic hair. The black triangle does."
My father says, "Then I wanted a green border, but it turns out that would mean Shane was a male prostitute."
My mom says, "We almost chose a red border, but that would mean fisting. Brown would mean either scat or rimming, we couldn't figure which."
Yellow," my father says, "means watersports."
A lighter shade of blue," Mom says, "would mean just regular oral sex."
Regular white," my father says, "would mean anal. White could also mean Shane was excited by men wearing underwear." He says, "I can't remember which."
My mother passes me the quilted chicken with the rolls still warm inside.
We're supposed to sit and eat with Shane dead all over the table in front of us.
Finally we just gave up," my mom says, "and I made a nice tablecloth out of the material."
Between the yams and the stuffing, Dad looks down at his plate and says, "Do you know about rimming?"
I know it isn't table talk.
And fisting?" my mom asks.
I say, I know. I don't mention Manus and his vocational porno magazines.
We sit there, all of us around a blue shroud with the turkey more like a big dead baked animal than ever, the stuffing chock full of organs you can still recognize, the heart and gizzard and liver, the gravy thick with cooked fat and blood. The flower centerpiece could be a casket spray.
Would you pass the butter, please?" my mother says. To my father she says, "Do you know what felching is?
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Tell the world what scares you the mostβ says Brandy.
She gives us each an Aubergine Dreams eyebrow pencil and says βSave the world with some advice from the futureβ
Seth writes on the back of a card and hands the card to Brandy for her to read.
On game shows, Brandy reads, some people will take the trip to France, but most people will take the washer dryer pair.β
Brandy puts a big Plumbago kiss in the little square for the stamp and lets the wind lift and card and sail it off toward the towers of downtown Seattle.
Seth hands her another, and Brandy reads:
Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random useless facts that are all we have left from our educationβ
A kiss and the cardβs on itβs way toward Lake Washington.
From Seth:
When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?β
A kiss and itβs off on the wind toward Ballard.
Only when we eat up this planet will God give us another. Weβll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.β
Interstate 5 snakes by in the distance. From high atop the Space Needle, the southbound lanes are red chase lights, and the northbound lanes are white chase lights. I take a card and write:
I love Seth Thomas so much I have to destroy him. I overcompensate by worshipping the queen supreme. Seth will never love me. No one will ever love me ever again.
Beandy is waiting to rake the card and read it out loud. Brandyβs waiting to read my worst fears to the world, but I donβt give her the card. I kiss it myself with the lips I donβt have and let the wind take it out of my hand. The card flies up, up, up to the stars and then falls down to land in the suicide net.
While I watch my future trapped in the suicide net Brandy reads another card from Seth.
We are all self-compostingβ
I write another card from the future and Brandy reads it:
When we donβt know who to hate, we hate ourselvesβ
An updraft lifts up my worst fears from the suicide net and lifts them away.
Seth writes and Brandy reads.
You have to keep recycling yourselfβ.
I write and Brandy reads.
Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody Iβve ever known.β
I write and Brandy reads.
The one you love and the one who loves you are never ever the same person.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)