Lullabies For Little Criminals Quotes

From the way that people have always talked about your heart being broken, it sort of seemed to be a one-time thing. Mine seemed to break all the time.

People give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, "If this were the Middle Ages, you'd be married and you'd own a farm with about a million chickens on it." They were trying to kick you out of childhood. Once you were gone, there was no going back, so you had to hold on as long as you could.

Becoming a child again is what is impossible. That's what you have a legitimate reason to be upset over. Childhood is the most valuable thing that's taken away from you in life, if you think about it.

If you want to get a child to love you, then you should just go hide in the closet for three or for hours. They get down on their knees and pray for you to return. That child will turn you into God. Lonely children probably wrote the Bible.

Childhood is the most valuable thing that's taken away from you in life, if you think about it.

Love is a big and wonderful idea, but life is made up of small things. As a kid, you have nothing to do with the way the world is run; you just have to hurry to catch up with it.

Suddenly I realized that I wanted everything to be as it was when I was younger. When you're young enough, you don't know that you live in a cheap lousy apartment. A cracked chair is nothing other than a chair. A dandelion growing out of a crack in the sidewalk outside your front door is a garden. You could believe that a song your parent was singing in the evening was the most tragic opera in the world. It never occurs to you when you are very young to need something other than what your parents have to offer you.

Lonely children probably wrote the Bible.

When she said sweet things in my ear, it would slide right down into my heart

My breath in the cold air was bleach that accidentally spilled on a black t-shirt.

The stars are always up in the sky...then when it is perfectly black, they feel less vulnerable and out they come.

Somewhere, a sparrow is singing in B minor.

The real first kiss is the one that tells you what it feels like to be an adult and doesn't let you be a child anymore. The first kiss is the one that you suffer the consequences of. It was as if I had been playing Russian roulette and finally got the cylinder with the bullet in it.

You see only the beautiful things when you stand still. You only see things that you don't ordinarily notice. The birds are the prettiest things, I imagine.

I have an artistic temperament, which is a really tragic thing.

The night was a typewriter key that got stuck and kept punching all the letters on top of the others until all that was left was a black blob. No word, no letter, no message in the night for me.

Sometimes when you are standing still and it’s snowing, you think that you hear music. You can’t tell where it’s coming from either. I wondered if we all really did have a soundtrack, but we just get so used to it that we can’t hear it anymore, the same way that we block out the sound of our own heartbeat.

I've been all over the place in all kinds of living situations. Due to the fact that my mind is my own worst enemy. In a way I am perpetually and permanently in a state of rehabilitation m in an attempt to rehabilitate from the shock of being born.Some people are too sensitive to withstand that.

I turned to the page on decorated buttons and tried to ponder their beauty instead of my own loneliness, trying to will myself into being a sociopath.

We were broke in a way that only kids can be broke. Our toes were black with dye from wearing boots that weren't waterproof. We had infected ear lobes and green rings around our fingers from cheap jewelry. No one ever even had a chocolate bar.

Xavier wasn’t put on the earth to witness the bad htings like Jules and I were. He had been put here to notice lovely things, things that God had created and no one had any complaints about. Leaves turning red in the autumn. How when the tide goes out, the shells are left on the shore. I was put here - Jules and I were both put here - to see sadder things. We had to stand in the rain and explain why the world was a lovely place.

When you're a kid, if you watch 'The Jeffersons' with your family at seven o'clock, it seems like a natural phenomenon, like the sun setting. The universe is a strange, strange place when all of a sudden you can't use your glass with the Bionic Woman on it any more.

They often got my file mixed up and thought that I had gone to juvenile detention for being a prostitute. All I had done was date a pimp.

Your superhuman power was to be able not to feel. Is it there inside everybody, this self that comes out while you are in captivity? You become the closest approximation of yourself that can tolerate living there.

When I thought about my old friends Linus Lucas and Theo, I realized they were not really criminals either. They were like me. We were just acting out the strangest, tragic little roles, pretending to be criminals in order to get by. We gave very convincing performances.

I went into the room and sat next to Linus on the bed. I put my hand on his shoulder. I was always surprised at how soft other people were. I thought I felt his heartbeat, although it could have been my own.

The smallest a family can be is two members, and that was Jules and me.

In the temporary illumination of the headlights, the insects were scribbling out messages from God that we couldn’t get.

I was always moved when mean people were suddenly nice to me. It was a weakness that would lead me into some bad relationships later in life.

Linus Lucas was fourteen years old, a number that made the spoons fall right out of our mouths.

He had intense gravitational force. He was like Saturn because Saturn has so many moons. If I kicked my shoes up in the air, they would go into orbit around him.

Jules and I were tiny people. We were delicate. We were almost destroyed. We were vulnerable. Like nerds in a school yard of bullies, we could have traded our stamps and cards of extinct animals. That’s the kind of people we would be if our situation were different.

I closed my eyes and the roof was gone. I could see the stars while the piano tinkled. I could see Jupiter and it was blue, and Neptune was silver like a tennis ball sprayed silver. I could reach out and touch it, like cold water.

You know you're my best friend, right?' he said. I shrugged. I guessed it was true. Now that I wasn't going to be at the parade, they would all hate me. Everything had been carefully choreographed, and me not being there would throw them all off. I realized that kids like Theo and me weren't supposed to have real friends. We were supposed to be all alone and confused. By being each other's friend, we were defying our laws of gravity.

She had fat arms, the type of arms that held sailors and soldiers and thieves. The kind of arms that held someone who was going away to jail for ten years. They were the arms of a woman who had eaten a hundred delicious cakes and pastries to get them this comfortable.

Whenever things were going well, I started to feel vain.

The home is the most ritualized place in a society; each house is like a religious order with its own ceremonies.

As a kid, you have nothing to do with the way the world is run; you just have to hurry to catch up with it.

When you’re young, sex doesn’t mean as much, it isn’t sacred. Children make the best prostitutes because they’re th emost perfunctory about the whole encounter. The whole act is like a dare, like kissing a frog or something. It’s nasty while it’s happening, but you forget about it soon afterward. And sometimes it isn’t even that nasty. Whatever it is, it’s so far from love.

People gave you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, "If this was the Middle Ages, you'd be married and you'd own a farm with a million chickens on it." They were trying to kick you out of childhood. Once you were gone, there was no going back, so you had to hold on as long as you could. Marika was beckoning from the other side.

He said that when you are in love with someone, you want to follow them to the bathroom. He said love just makes you pathetic.

Women aren't mean the way that men are. They're full of life and they're like God in that way.

What the hell is that?" he asked. "Magic mushrooms." "I've always wanted to try those," he exclaimed. "They sound so cute.

Being judged by society makes you disregard it altogether after a while. Jean-Michel didn’t know that he shouldn’t get a twelve-year-old drugs. He didn’t even really know what a twelve-year-old was.

When I opened a book now, I was seized with desperation. I felt as if I was madly in love. It was as if I were in a confession booth and the characters in the book were on the other side telling me their most intimate secrets. When I read, I was a philosopher and it was up to me to figure out the meaning of things. Reading made me feel as if I were the center of the universe.

They had this angry look about them, as if they had been falling off swings all day.

The sky was the color of lightbulbs that weren’t lit.

Love is a big and wonderful idea, but life is made up of small things.

You become the closest approximation of yourself that can tolerate living there.

They tried to look punk but came off looking more like cats with mange. Just

Drug dealers wouldn’t want to have anything to do with these pathetic specimens. You had to be relaxed and professional to associate with drug dealers.

All the colorful lights had been turned off and the sky was the color of television static.

Violence never gives you a specific feeling that it’s time to knock it off. That’s because it is impossible to satisfy.

Board games were invented to keep people from thinking so they won't plan a revolution.

I guess it was worth having your self-esteem destroyed if there was a free toy involved.

I don’t know why I was upset about not being an adult. It was right around the corner. Becoming a child again is what is impossible. That’s what you have legitimate reason to be upset over. Childhood is the most valuable thing that’s taken away from you in life, if you think about it.

As soon as I looked at Alphonse's face, I knew that he was dead. I had the strange feeling that I was dead myself. It felt as if I were lying at the bottom of a grave and earth was being thrown on me. When death takes someone you know, he holds you and whispers all his secrets in your ear.

He was and probably still is, to this day, the worst-smelling person I have ever hugged. But it was wonderful. He just wrapped his arms all the way around me. He hugged me the way that parents hug: with them doing all the work.

I closed my eyes and the roof was gone. I could see the stars while the piano tinkled. I could see Jupiter and it was blue, and Neptune was silver like a tennis ball sprayed silver. I could reach out and touch it, like cold water.

My dad had told me that if you stayed out after nine and you were a girl it meant that you wanted to have sex with whoever was passing by. He told me that if I got raped after nine o'clock the courts would probably say I deserved it.

Zwölf ist ein wunderschönes und bemerkenswertes Alter; um diese Zeit fangen Kinder an, große Töne zu spucken und zu überlegen, wie sie es allein schaffen könnten: genau wie Engel, unmittelbar bevor sie aus dem Himmel vertrieben werden. Sie haben solch unschuldige und gefährliche Ideen.

Suddenly I realized that I wanted everything to be as it was when I was younger. When you're young enough, you don't know that you live in a cheap lousy apartment. A cracked chair is nothing other than a chair. A dandelion growing out of a crack in the side walk outside your front door is a garden. You could believe that a song your partner was singing in the evening was the most tragic opera in the world. It never occurs to you when you are very young to need something other than what your parents have to offer you.

It made me sick to my stomach thinking about why I'd been slapped. Slapping is never a good thing, but there should at least be some sort of legitimate reason behind it, like an exclamation mark needs to follow an exclamatory sentence. I remembered the teacher who'd made fun of me for doing that. You can't just put an exclamatory sentence anywhere!

I stumbled out into the street, hoping that I looked like a drunken sailor. Everything was all topsy-turvy because my eyes were filled with tears. I clutched my shoes to my chest as I went. I cried loudly, not even bothering to wipe the tears and snot off my face. I just let it all pour down, allowing everybody walking by to see what this world had done to me. If a kid my age walks down the street in her socks, crying her eyes out, then it makes it a bad neighborhood. I was glad I was making their world a shitty place to live.

That's the way I talked when I smoked pot. It was a gift. Every time I smoked up, these pretty phrases and ideas just popped into my head. Usually I went around with so many ugly insecure things flying around in my head that when a pretty thought came to me, it usually died a lonely death, afraid to come out. But when I was high, I simply had to utter it.

The snowflakes came down like little bits of newspaper

They all dressed like crack addicts. A boy wore a white leather belt as a tie.

I wanted desperately to belong to someone. It didn't really matter who.

When I read, I was a philosopher and it was up to me to figure out the meaning of things. Reading made me feel as if I were the center of the universe.

I decided to get my butt up out of the coffin, just like Jesus Christ, and come and chitchat with all my beautiful and soulful friends.

But having a young parent meant you had to pack up your stuff in an hour and run away from a twenty-two-year-old from Oshawa who was going to be mad at you for having sold his guitars.

There was a way that you could sleep properly when a house had been straightened up, when all the Ranger Ricks were put up on the shelf and the toys were put in the plastic box and tomorrow's clothes were laid out neatly on a chair. But then again, when everything was left out all over the floor and the dishes were still in the sink, there was a way that you could dream.

There was this professional hockey player that I liked. I imagined him watching at the parade and falling in love with me. It didn't occur to me that he probably wasn't interested in twelve-year-olds.

Jules always told me not to tell people your business, not to tell them your past. He said to keep them guessing. He said that once a person knew all there was to know about you, they’d take advantage of you. Trust nobody, he’d told me over and over. In a way, I’d kept his advice up until just then. I was stoned and felt like sharing all my shit with the whole world. I wanted to be taken advantage of.

Felix was in his room singing into a tape recorder then playing it back and exclaiming, “My God. Do I actually sound like this? All this time I thought that I was a great singer, but I don’t have any talent whatsoever!

People gave you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn’t want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, “If this were the Middle Ages, you’d be married and you’d own a farm with about a million chickens on it.

If you want to get a child to love you, then you should just go and hide in the closet for three or four hours. They get down on their knees and pray for you to return. That child will turn you into God. Lonely children probably wrote the Bible.

He said that if you were able to look at the crows really closely, you would see that their eyes were stolen baubles, like buttons or marbles. To get real eyes, they had to steal them from children. Older people's eyes were too set in their ways of looking and would be no good for a crow. That's why people don't let their children out after dark. The crow who stole the eyes of a real child was king. With a piece of plastic they could just see what was in front of them, but with a child's eyes, they could see the whole world.

When I open a book now, I was seized with desperation. I felt as if I was madly in love. It was as if I were in a confession booth and the characters in the book were on the other side telling me their most intimate secrets. When I read, I was a philosopher and it was up to me to figure out the meaning of things. Reading made me feel as if I were the center of the universe.

Suddenly I realized that I wanted everything to be as it was when I was younger. When you're young enough, you don't know that you live in a cheap lousy apartment. A cracked chair is nothing other than a chair. A dandelion growing out of a crack in the side walk outside your front door is a garden. You could believe that a song your partner was singing in the evening was the most tragic opera in the world. It never occurs to you when you are very young to need something other than what your parents have to offer you

God bless her, but the child is wild. It’s not her fault. But she’ll never be normal. At least let her enjoy her childhood. You read the report, didn’t you? There was rotten food in the fridge, clothes all over the floor. She came here wearing one of her father’s T-shirts and his baseball cap. You just wanted to throw out all the things that she had in her suitcase and give her a chance to start all over again. And the child’s fingernails were long. Who ever heard of long fingernails on a twelve-year-old? And she smelled!’ ‘Is she worse than Rodney?’ ‘Rodney? No, God no. She doesn’t need psychiatric help. I’m just saying that she needs a couple extra things like a sweater or some new toys of her own.’ Later that afternoon, Isabelle came into my room with a box filled with girls’ toys. I pulled out a blue pony with long yellow hair and pink seashells on its butt. ‘Who was Rodney?’ I asked her. A little boy who lived here and used to wear swimming goggles all the time. Who’s been talking to you about Rodney?’ ‘You mentioned him to the social worker.’ ‘Lord! Don’t worry what I say to the social worker. I have to make you sound like a real sorrowful case to be able to get you more things. See, I got you a pretty pony, didn’t I?’ I guess it was worth having your self-esteem destroyed if there was a free toy involved. Isabelle told me that she was trying to get us a subscription to Ranger Rick magazine. I didn’t want to hear what she was going to say about me to get it.

were passing by. Once I heard him making fun of Jules. Jules was walking down the street carrying a lamp in his hand that he’d obviously just pulled out of some garbage heap. “Look at the garbage picker man!” Alphonse said. “That motherfucker is sad. He tried to sell me a comforter once! I said get the hell away from me. He’s out all night looking for rags and bones. What year we living in, man? Get a real job, motherfucker.” Jules couldn’t stand Alphonse either. He said Alphonse was a pimp. I didn’t know what a pimp did exactly. I was almost certain that it meant he had prostitutes working for him, but I wasn’t sure. I told a kid at school that I knew a pimp and he said, “Bullshit. It’s not fucking possible. You’re making it up.” So I guessed I’d made a mistake. Or maybe the word “pimp” had two different meanings.   I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING to make older guys want to treat me like I was one of them,