Mad Dummy Quotes

Every single person is a fool, insane, a failure, or a bad person to at least ten people.

I had let it all grow. I had supposed It was all OK. Your life Was a liner I voyaged in. Costly education had fitted you out. Financiers and committees and consultants Effaced themselves in the gleam of your finish. You trembled with the new life of those engines. That first morning, Before your first class at College, you sat there Sipping coffee. Now I know, as I did not, What eyes waited at the back of the class To check your first professional performance Against their expectations. What assessors Waited to see you justify the cost And redeem their gamble. What a furnace Of eyes waited to prove your metal. I watched The strange dummy stiffness, the misery, Of your blue flannel suit, its straitjacket, ugly Half-approximation to your idea Of the properties you hoped to ease into, And your horror in it. And the tanned Almost green undertinge of your face Shrunk to its wick, your scar lumpish, your plaited Head pathetically tiny. You waited, Knowing yourself helpless in the tweezers Of the life that judges you, and I saw The flayed nerve, the unhealable face-wound Which was all you had for courage. I saw that what you gripped, as you sipped, Were terrors that killed you once already. Now I see, I saw, sitting, the lonely Girl who was going to die. That blue suit. A mad, execution uniform, Survived your sentence. But then I sat, stilled, Unable to fathom what stilled you As I looked at you, as I am stilled Permanently now, permanently Bending so briefly at your open coffin.

Forgiveness is at the very heart of the Christian faith. It’s not about getting better, becoming more religious, or following the rules so God will love you. It’s all about forgiveness, dummy! Everything else is secondary. If we don’t keep the main thing the main thing, then everything else will turn sour on us.

That night, I dream. And when I wake up I remember watching a film with Nannan about a ventriloquist who went mad, his dummy coming to life and speaking for itself. My dream is like the end of the film where the ventriloquist and the dummy are in the madhouse, all these mad devil-faces pressed against the iron bars of the cell door, laughing as the dummy gets up off his chair and walks towards the ventriloquist who screams. The dummy strangles him. I can’t remember in the dream if I was the ventriloquist or the dummy. I’m in a funny mood all day. I don’t say much. I don’t feel like it.

How do you spell 'solicitor'?" asked Freddy. "That's easy!" said Homer. "S-o-l-i-t-o-r." "Well, it can't be all that easy," said Freddy. "These dummies have it spelled with an 'e' on this card." And he held the card under Homer's nose. "I smell something funny!" Jeff said to me, very quietly. "It couldn't be Mr. Stunkard, could it?" I half whispered. Jeff shrugged. "Maybe it's Mr. Smellow!

Just because you’ve made me mad doesn’t mean I ever stopped caring about you, dummy,” I whispered in a frown, totally conscious of the guys sitting behind us. “I would have done just about anything for you back then, even when you got on my nerves. I might have just waited until the last minute to push you out of oncoming traffic, but I’d still push you out of the way.

And the winner is,” he sings. He waits, opening the folded piece of paper slowly, drawing out the suspense. I can barely hear him over my own heartbeat, which is thumping like crazy. Is it too late to back out? Shit. I don’t want to do this. “The winner is the person who guessed twelve hundred and forty-eight!” The crowd is silent, and all the participants look to one another. But then I hear a thump, thump, thump, thump as someone comes up the stairs onto the platform. I see the baseball cap before I see the rest of him, and I hope to God that’s Sean’s cap. But Sean didn’t even buy a ticket. Not a single one. Yet it’s his brown gaze that meets mine. It’s his baseball cap, and they are his tattoos. They’re his broad shoulders and his long strides that eat up the distance between us. He turns his hat backward and looks down at me. He stops with less than an inch to spare between us. “Congratulations,” I squeak out. “You didn’t even buy a ticket. How did you…?” “I bought one hundred and forty-two tickets, dummy,” he says. My heart trips a beat. “You did?” All he had to buy was one. I put the winning number on the piece of paper I gave him. He nods, and he takes my face in his hands. His thumbs draw little circles on my cheeks as his fingers thread into the hair at my temples. “You didn’t look at the paper I gave you….” My heart is pounding like mad. “What paper?” he asks. His smile is soft and inviting, and I want to fall into him. “The one you put in your pocket.” His brow furrows. “Never mind,” I say, breathless. He spent 142 dollars for a kiss he already owned in more ways than one. If I loved this man any more, it would be dangerous. He looks down into my eyes, not moving. He’s going to kiss me, right? “What’s the plan here?” “I’m going to kiss my girl,” he says, smiling at me. My breath hitches. “But you have to say yes, first.” He hasn’t let me go. He’s holding me tightly, forcing me to meet his eyes. “This isn’t going to be a one-time thing.” I can’t even think, and he wants me to commit? “It’s not,” I breathe. “You promise?” His gaze searches mine like he’s going to find the secrets to the universe there. “I swear on your life,” I say. He chuckles. “My life?” I nod. His eyebrows draw together. “Aren’t you supposed to swear on your own life?” “My life means nothing if you’re not in it.” His hands start to tremble against my face, and he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Logan’s brothers start to chant, “Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss…,” and the crowd joins in. “You better kiss me,” I say, “or they’re going to get restless.” A tear rolls down my cheek, and he brushes it back with his thumb, his gaze soft and warm. His eyes open, and he leans closer to me. I step onto my tiptoes to get to him because I can’t wait one more second. He stops a breath away from me, just like he did in the room. He waits. “You have to close the distance,” he says to me. He’s making me choose. I fall into him and press my lips to his. He freezes. But then he starts to kiss me. And all the fireworks at the state fair couldn’t compare to the ones that go off in my head.

Now, tell me ’bout this locker business again,” Honey said as she picked up a glass and started drying it along beside me. “They’re just putting sticky notes and ugly letters on my locker, threatening me and stuff. It’s silly. Other than the time I was shoved into the locker and hit in the head, I haven’t suffered any injuries.” “And that sorry sonuvabitch ain’t stopping them from treating you this way?” I shrugged, thinking of Sawyer watching silently from a distance. “He’s just like his father. Don’t know why that surprises me. Ain’t gonna help none when Beau comes back. When my boy finds out Sawyer let this happen, he’s gonna be spittin’ mad. I was hoping them two’d mend fences once Beau shows back up.” “I don’t intend to tell Beau about any of this. He won’t know it happened, and once he’s back, it’ll have tapered off. That way he won’t have a reason to be mad at Sawyer.” Honey snorted and slapped the bar in front of me with her towel. “Girl, you grew up with Beau. You should know better than that. He ain’t a dummy. Besides, someone’ll tell him, and when they do, all Hell’s gonna break loose.

Help them adopt an alternative greeting style: They might grab a toy and dash around like mad or flip over on their back for a belly rub, also known as “belly up!

THE BLUE FLANNEL SUIT" I had let it all grow. I had supposed It was all OK. Your life Was a liner I voyaged in. Costly education had fitted you out. Financiers and committees and consultants Effaced themselves in the gleam of your finish. You trembled with the new life of those engines. That first morning, Before your first class at College, you sat there Sipping coffee. Now I know, as I did not, What eyes waited at the back of the class To check your first professional performance Against their expectations. What assessors Waited to see you justify the cost And redeem their gamble. What a furnace Of eyes waited to prove your metal. I watched The strange dummy stiffness, the misery, Of your blue flannel suit, its straitjacket, ugly Half-approximation to your idea Of the properties you hoped to ease into, And your horror in it. And the tanned Almost green undertinge of your face Shrunk to its wick, your scar lumpish, your plaited Head pathetically tiny. You waited, Knowing yourself helpless in the tweezers Of the life that judges you, and I saw The flayed nerve, the unhealable face-wound Which was all you had for courage. I saw that what you gripped, as you sipped, Were terrors that killed you once already. Now I see, I saw, sitting, the lonely Girl who was going to die. That blue suit, A mad, execution uniform, Survived your sentence. But then I sat, stilled, Unable to fathom what stilled you As I looked at you, as I am stilled Permanently now, permanently Bending so briefly at your open coffin.