“
Dude! said a party pony as he unloaded his gear. Did you see that bear guy? He was all like: 'Whoa, I have an arrow in my mouth!
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2))
“
Funny, that no matter where you are in the world, there's always someone eager to help you destroy yourself.
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
I'm not normally one to take advice from my fictional characters, but there comes a point in every girl's life where she reaches a crossroads: a night alone with her sweatpants and her favorite television show, or a party with real, live, breathing people.
”
”
Francesca Zappia (Eliza and Her Monsters)
“
If we're all going to hell in a handbasket, we might as well make it a party on the way down
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
And elsewhere in the woods, there is another party, one taking place inside a hollow hill, full of night-blooming flowers. There, a pale boy plays a fiddle with newly mended fingers while his sister dances with his best friend. There, a monster whirls about, branches waving in time with the music, There, a prince of the Folk takes up the mantle of king, embracing a changeling like a bother, and, with a human boy at his side, names a girl his champion.
”
”
Holly Black (The Darkest Part of the Forest)
“
Never miss a party...good for the nerves--like celery.
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (Gatsby Girls)
“
I wanted to meet the monster.
Why go down if you can go up?
”
”
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
“
I make art for the sake of art . . . and for my own selfish gratification, because I’m an artistic monster.
”
”
Lindsey Stirling (The Only Pirate at the Party)
“
I give you bitter pills, in a sugar coating. The pills are harmless - the poison's in the sugar
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
Watch out for the average--they're usually hiding something big.
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
True love is jealousy in disguise: A man cannot restrict his lover from going to the club because he hates her, he actually hates the men who would come around and touch her.
”
”
Michael Bassey Johnson
“
There are people who have too much space between their ears, and given the time, do nothing but free fall forever inside their head. It's a spooky thing to be left alone inside an angry innerverse.
”
”
James St. James
“
Drug addicts are so funny that way. Just spinning around, lost in their own little world. Doing so much, accomplishing so little. How sad.
”
”
James St. James
“
People die all around us all the time. Drop like flies. Overdose. Aids. Sometimes they kill themselves. People come. They go. Dying is the same as rehab or moving back to Missouri. It just means I won't be seeing them again
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
Some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don’t need much encouragement at all to become monsters. And sometimes you just get a strong sense about people, and you can’t explain it; you simply know it, in some deeper part of yourself.
”
”
Lucy Foley (The Hunting Party)
“
We didn't wish -- wishes are wasted...
We didn't hope -- because our future was inevitable...
And we didn't pray -- we were on our own.
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
People can be monsters, or vulnerable as lambs. They—no, we—are perpetrators and victims at the same time. It takes so little to tip the scale one way or the other. This is the world we live in,
”
”
Carmen Maria Machado (Her Body and Other Parties)
“
It's a spooky thing to be left alone inside an angry innerverse.
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
No, Michael, I do not trust you on a boat, I do not trust you on a goat. I do not trust you here. I do not trust you there. I do not trust you anywhere.
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
There are times when the world slips out of control. It's like an accident that is happening too quickly , and you can't stop it, you can't think about it, you have no choice but to lean back and watch as everything changes forever.
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
At first it's bliss. It's drunken, heady, intoxicating. It swallows the people we were - not particuarly wonderful people, but people who did our best, more or less - and spits out the monsters we are becoming.
Our friends despise us. We are an epic. Everything is grand, crashing, brilliant, blinding. It's the Golden Age of Hollywood, and we are a legend in our own minds, and no one outside can fail to see that we are headed for hell, and we won't listen, we say they don't understand, we pour more wine, go to the parties, we sparkle, fly all over the country, we're on an adventure, unstoppable, we've found each other and we race through our days like Mr. Toad in his yellow motorcar, with no idea where the brakes are and to hell with it anyway, we are on fire, drunk with something we call love.
”
”
Marya Hornbacher (Madness: A Bipolar Life)
“
When you let the wolves guard the hen house, there's bound to be a few chicken dinners.
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
Teenage bodies should be filled with Vonnegut and meatball subs, not opiates that create glassy-eyed party monsters.
”
”
Amy Poehler (Yes Please)
“
I had seen other stop-motion animated features, and they were either not engaging or they're just too bizarre. There was one I liked when I was a kid called Mad Monster Party. People thought Nightmare was the first stop-motion animated monster musical, but that was.
”
”
Tim Burton (Burton on Burton)
“
Female monsters take things as personally as they really are. They study facts. Even if rejection makes them feel like the girl who's not invited to the party, they have to understand the reasons why.
... Every question, once it's formulated, is a paradigm, contains its own internal truth. We have to stop diverting ourselves with false questions. And I told Warren: I aim to be a female monster too.
”
”
Chris Kraus (I Love Dick)
“
Just spinning around, lost in their own little world. Doing so much, accomplishing so little. How sad.
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
And what do we have here? A scary monster, cowboy, and a fairy princess! Here's a hit of ecstasy, run along now.
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
So let's start at the very begining (a very good place to start...)
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
Humans have fallen so far since the early days when they’d just throw you a party when you killed a monster.
”
”
C. Gockel (Wolves (I Bring the Fire, #1))
“
So put your costume on, honey! Ruby said. Set Harlequin free! That party monster of yours is screaming to come out. Let the monster out!
”
”
Tom Spanbauer (In the City of Shy Hunters)
“
Sometimes I wonder if the bars make the monsters and not the other way around.
”
”
Carmen Maria Machado (Her Body and Other Parties: Stories)
“
She had been to a tea-party with an antediluvian monster, and that they had been waited on by up-to-date men-servants.
”
”
Bram Stoker (Lair of the White Worm)
“
We're like two peas in a pod""Pity the pod
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
A few short years ago, the Nazi Party was some angry men in one beer hall. Germany had no army, wasn't allowed an army. Don't underestimate them. That's been everyone's mistake.
”
”
Matt Killeen (Orphan Monster Spy (Orphan Monster Spy, #1))
“
I don’t know how you look at the inside of your head — what metaphor you choose — but for those of us with endless yawning stretches of interior and nothing but nothing to stop us from getting lost in it, drugs can be wonderfully helpful.
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
I traded with Jesiba for your freedom last week. I have the papers in my desk. I wanted to throw a party for it- to surprise you.' The bathroom door began warping, bending. Bryce sobbed. 'I bought you and now I set you free, Lehabah.'
Lehabah's smile didn't falter. 'I know,' she said. 'I peeked in your drawer.'
And despite the monster trying to break loose behind them, Bryce choked on a laugh before she begged. 'You are a free person- you do not have to do this. You are free, Lehabah.'
Yet Lehabah remained at the foot of the stairs. 'Then let the world know that my first act of freedom was to help my friends.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City, #1))
“
If letters had eyebrows, these would be arched.
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
looked over at the campfire, where three party ponies were teaching Tyson to operate a paintball gun. I hoped they knew what they were getting into.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2))
“
People want this to be an anomaly.... we can handle monsters, we can't handle our neighbors doing these things. we can't believe these are the same people we see at Christmas parties, and basketball games.
”
”
T.E. Carter
“
Each man in this stretcher party had gained a reflected majesty. They were footmen to death, and
”
”
Stephen Crane (The Monster and Other Stories)
“
god should have made girls lethal when he made monsters of men. —ELISABETH HEWER
”
”
Carmen Maria Machado (Her Body and Other Parties)
“
and so it came to pass that i was strapped to a gurney and covered in raw liver and slabs of beef that very quickly turned rancid under the bright spotlights. there exists a videotape somewhere that documents me being wheeled about the dance floor by two burly "orderlies," while i desperately search for a bathroom big enough to accommodate the stretcher so i can do a bump of cocaine. watching me retch from the decomposing meat, and simultaneously fiend for drugs, makes for an entertaining time, indeed.
when i told my mother the extremes i went to in order to make a living, she just shook her head and said, "now don't you wish you'd finished college, dear?"
mothers are so wise, sometimes.
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
When I was younger, my brother told me that he had the power to shrink me to the size of an ant. In fact, he said, he used to have another sister, but he shrank her down and stepped on her.
He also told me that when you became a grown-up, you were admitted into a private party that was full of monsters and horror movie characters. There was Chucky, drinking a cup of coffee. And the mummy on the cover of the Hardy Boys book that used to freak me out, except he was doing the twist while Jason from 'Friday the 13th' played the alto sax. He told me you stayed at the party as long as you had to, making conversation with these creatures, and that was why adults were never afraid of anything.
I used to believe everything my brother told me, because he was older and I figured he knew more about the world. But as it turns out, being a grown-up doesn't mean you're fearless.
It just means you fear different things.
”
”
Jodi Picoult (Lone Wolf)
“
Centaurs!” Annabeth yelled. The Party Pony army exploded into our midst in a riot of colors: tie-dyed shirts, rainbow Afro wigs, oversize sunglasses, and war-painted faces. Some had slogans scrawled across their flanks like HORSEZ PWN or KRONOS SUX. Hundreds of them filled the entire block. My brain couldn’t process everything I saw, but I knew if I were the enemy, I’d be running.
“Percy!” Chiron shouted across the sea of wild centaurs. He was dressed in armor from the waist up, his bow in his hand, and he was grinning in satisfaction. “Sorry we’re late!”
“DUDE!” Another centaur yelled. “Talk later. WASTE MONSTERS NOW!” He locked and loaded a double-barrel paint gun and blasted an enemy hellhound bright pink. The paint must’ve been mixed with Celestial bronze dust or something, because as soon as it splattered the hellhound, the monster yelped and dissolved into a pink-and-black puddle.
“PARTY PONIES!” a centaur yelled. “SOUTH FLORIDA CHAPTER!”
Somewhere across the battlefield, a twangy voice yelled back, “HEART OF TEXAS CHAPTER!”
“HAWAII OWNS YOUR FACES!” a third one shouted.
It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The entire Titan army turned and fled, pushed back by a flood of paintballs, arrows, swords, and NERF baseball bats. The centaurs trampled everything in their path.
“Stop running, you fools!” Kronos yelled. “Stand and ACKK!”
That last part was because a panicked Hyperborean giant stumbled backward and sat on top of him.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #5))
“
He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable. What certainty had he that a single human creature now living was on his side? And what way of knowing that the dominion of the Party would not endure for ever?
”
”
George Orwell (1984)
“
Why, oh why, must we always go through pigs to get our truffles?
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
A group of adventurers is known as a "party," and not just because they like to celebrate their success together in the end. Your party should be as close to you as your family--assuming your family can cast spells, kill monsters, and bring you back from the edge of death.
”
”
Matt Forbeck (Dungeonology (Ologies, #13))
“
But he hadn’t always played nice, and his image of youthful excess, which had once garnered free publicity, had sunk him, eliciting awful headlines: “Party Monster’s Bacchanal Ends in Tragedy” had been one of the best ones. Plus, Karina’s father, Evaristo Junco, was a vindictive asshole who had blamed Tristán
”
”
Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Silver Nitrate)
“
He stayed there with her through the night. Every time she struggled to open her eyes, she'd see him, the ghostly outline of white ears against the threatening shadows.
Perhaps he had killed her after all. Perhaps he hadn't. There was only one thing Cassidy Evans knew for sure: It had been a marvelous tea party.
”
”
Carrie Ryan (Slasher Girls & Monster Boys)
“
My view of writing "Coldest Girl in Coldtown" was to take every single thing that I loved from every vampire book I had ever read and dump it into one book--everything I like--trying to evoke some of the decadence… Vampires are a high-class monster: They want to dress up. They want to drink a lot of absinthe, or force their victims to drink a lot of absinthe. They have big parties and have elegant rituals. I think that's a thing we associate with vampires--they are the royalty of our monsters. We expect them to be rich, we expect them to be well-dressed. I wanted to have some of that be true because I like it, and have some of it not be true because it's kind of weird.
I wanted to put in the idea of infection, which I was really interested in and which was a big feature of the vampire books I read growing up. And, the fear and desire for infection--the way in which our urge towards loving vampires is nihilistic. Our fear of them is our survival instincts kicking in.
”
”
Holly Black
“
Bekka treated her role has Frankenstein's bride more like an audition to be Brett's bride. Every part of her body had been colored bright kelly green - even parts that her mother had stressed were 'not to be seen by anyone except God and the inside of a toilet bowl.' Instead of wearing a wig, Bekka had teased and then shellacked her own hair into a windblown cone and she'd used female-mustache bleach to create white streaks. Her seams, made of real suture thread, had been attached to her neck and wrists with clear double-sided costume tape because drawing them on with kohl would not have been 'honoring the character.' Her Costume Castle dress had been exchanged for something 'more authentic' from the Bridal Barn. If Brett didn't see his future in her heavily black-shadowed eyes tonight, he never would. Or so she believed.
”
”
Lisi Harrison (Monster High (Monster High, #1))
“
I cannot forget the figures of Slobodan Milošević, Charles Taylor and Saddam Hussein, who made terrified fiefdoms out of their "own" people and mounds of corpses on the territory of their neighbours. I was glad to see each of these monsters brought to trial, and think the achievement should (and one day will) form part of the battle‑honours of British Labour. Many of the triumphant pelters and taunters would have left the dictators and aggressors in place: they too will have their place in history.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens
“
Actually, dear, don’t wait up for me. My knitting club and I are partying it up tonight at Joyce Becker’s. She’s making monster margaritas.” Julia
”
”
K.C. Lynn (Fighting Temptation (Men of Honor, #1))
“
Every degree of power involves a corresponding degree of freedo from good and evil.
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
THE PARTY PONIES INVADE
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2))
“
City of Vassillian a party of five sage princes with four horses. The princes, who are of course brave, noble and wise, travel widely in distant lands, fight giant ogres, pursue exotic philosophies, take tea with weird gods and rescue beautiful monsters from ravening princesses before finally announcing that they have achieved enlightenment and that their wanderings are therefore accomplished. The second, and much longer, part of each song would then tell of all their bickerings about which one of them is going to have to walk back. All this lay in the planet’s remote past.
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2))
“
Speaking from experince, there are people who have too much space between their ears, and given the time, do nothing but free fall forever inside their heads. It's a spooky thing to be left alone inside an angry inner-verse.
Drugs redirect the fall. They cushion it. Give you a parachute. Or maybe just a flashlight and scuba gear. I don't know how you look at the inside of your head-- what metaphor you choose-- but for those of us with endless yawning stretches of interior and nothing but nothing to stop us from getting lost in it, drugs can be wonderfully helpful.
For a time.
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
These reactions are irrational and largely outside people’s control. Intense and barely controllable urges and emotions make people feel crazy—and makes them feel they don’t belong to the human race. Feeling numb during birthday parties for your kids or in response to the death of loved ones makes people feel like monsters. As a result, shame becomes the dominant emotion and hiding the truth the central preoccupation.
”
”
Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
“
ROWWF!” Mrs. O’Leary bounded toward me, ignoring the growling monsters on either side. Nico strode forward. The enemy army fell back before him like he radiated death, which of course he did. Through the face guard of his skull-shaped helmet, he smiled. “Got your message. Is it too late to join the party?” “Son of Hades.” Kronos spit on the ground. “Do you love death so much you wish to experience it?” “Your death,” Nico said, “would be great for me.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #5))
“
Jeremy supposed that a Christmas party full of elementary school professionals might be the worst place in the world. He would drift among them helplessly, like a grizzly bear in a roomful of children, expected not to eat anyone.
”
”
Nathan Ballingrud (North American Lake Monsters)
“
As he journeyed alone toward the monster that is death, we could do nothing to help him, nor the others still alive; all the words of strength on our lips melted away, our love not great enough to bind them to life, and our hope not enough to will them to live.
”
”
Alfred Nestor (Uncle Hitler: A Child's Traumatic Journey Through Nazi Hell to the Safety of Britain)
“
You’re not so bad,” she mumbled. “A little freaky looking, sure, but I don’t know what all the fuss is about, honestly. So you look like the grim reaper. Whatever. I think it’s kinda cute, honestly. You’d be a hit at one of Suyin’s Halloween parties, lemme tell ya. The goth kids would go nuts for you.”
The claws continued to pet her cheek, and her awareness continued to slip away.”
“But don’t get cocky,” she mumbled incoherently. “Doesn’t matter how much they love you, you’re my monster, and I don’t share.”
“Isss,” Meph hissed in that fingernails-on-a-chalkboard voice.
“Don’t worry.” She smiled faintly. “I’m yours too.
”
”
Aurora Ascher (Demon With Benefits (Hell Bent, #3))
“
Let’s say our Republican overlords can convince us that these were just personal quirks of a “black swan” leader who kept us from the horror of…a former secretary of state, U.S. senator, and First Lady becoming president. To avoid the nightmare of having a president who had actually spent decades preparing for the job, it was necessary to nominate a reality-TV figure who talked openly of his desire to have sex with his own daughter and lectured Republican members of Congress on Article XII of the Constitution, which exists only in his mind. This positions Donald Trump as the Necessary Monster history demanded to save the Republican Party.
”
”
Stuart Stevens (It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump)
“
Some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don’t need much encouragement at all to become monsters. And sometimes you just get a strong sense about people, and you can’t explain it; you simply know it, in some deeper part of yourself. That’s the lizard brain, too.
”
”
Lucy Foley (The Hunting Party)
“
Do you remember bedtime as a child? I was terrified of the dark. I was terrified of the closed closet door that surely cracked open when I wasn't looking and spewed out ghouls and devils. I took care that no arms or legs protruded from the bed. I sometimes slept with the covers over my head. Sweltering, panting, barely breathing. Not even my hair exposed, lest a monster discover and devour me. I remember begging my father to check under the bed. I remember trying to explain how some monsters had invisibility cloaks. He would kiss my cheek and switch off the light.
We stop looking under the bed once we realize that the monsters are inside us.
It's funny how they transform. Suddenly they don't mind daylight. Suddenly they dress nicely, speak our language, and share our customs. They sit next to us on the metro and jog around our neighborhoods. They slip things into our drinks at parties and offer us jobs. Sometimes we spot them, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we even do the unthinkable: we invite them to our bed. As adults, we burn down the sanctuaries we created as children. Our inner child freaks out, but its screams are drowned by our moans as our monsters bring us to orgasm.
”
”
Angela Panayotopulos (The Wake Up)
“
She found herself thinking about the games that she had played when she was young with other children in the village. Those whose parents hadn’t forbidden them from playing with her, that is.
They were princes and princess. Damsels and knights. They built castles of twigs and made woven crowns of bluebells and swanned around the fields as if they were nobles in Verene. The had imagined a life of jewels and parties and feasts— oh, the feasts they had dreamed up—the dances, the balls.
Serilda had been so very good at dreaming. Even then, her peers were eager to hear her turn their simple musings into unparalleled adventures.
But never had it crossed Serilda’s mind, not for the shortest swallow trill, that it might come true.
She would live in a castle.
She would be wed to a king.
She would be wed to a monster.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Gilded (Gilded, #1))
“
Most people read Homer in those stupid eighteenth-century translations,” Gautier said calmly. “They make him sound like Marie-Antoinette nibbling biscuits in the Tuileries. But if you read him in Greek you can see he’s a monster, his people are monsters. The whole thing is like a dinner party for barbarians. They eat with their fingers. They put mud in their hair when they are upset. They spend half the time painting themselves.
”
”
Adam Nicolson (Why Homer Matters: A History)
“
Never play the princess when you can
be the queen:
rule the kingdom, swing a scepter,
wear a crown of gold.
Don’t dance in glass slippers,
crystal carving up your toes --
be a barefoot Amazon instead,
for those shoes will surely shatter on your feet.
Never wear only pink
when you can strut in crimson red,
sweat in heather grey, and
shimmer in sky blue,
claim the golden sun upon your hair.
Colors are for everyone,
boys and girls, men and women --
be a verdant garden, the landscape of Versailles,
not a pale primrose blindly pushed aside.
Chase green dragons and one-eyed zombies,
fierce and fiery toothy monsters,
not merely lazy butterflies,
sweet and slow on summer days.
For you can tame the most brutish beasts
with your wily wits and charm,
and lizard scales feel just as smooth
as gossamer insect wings.
Tramp muddy through the house in
a purple tutu and cowboy boots.
Have a tea party in your overalls.
Build a fort of birch branches,
a zoo of Legos, a rocketship of
Queen Anne chairs and coverlets,
first stop on the moon.
Dream of dinosaurs and baby dolls,
bold brontosaurus and bookish Belle,
not Barbie on the runway or
Disney damsels in distress --
you are much too strong to play
the simpering waif.
Don a baseball cap, dance with Daddy,
paint your toenails, climb a cottonwood.
Learn to speak with both your mind and heart.
For the ground beneath will hold you, dear --
know that you are free.
And never grow a wishbone, daughter,
where your backbone ought to be.
”
”
Clementine Paddleford
“
Bonaparte had become an almost fabulous monster and in order to defile him in the popular imagination, which, as we pointed out a moment ago, is like the imagination of children, the party of 1814 whipped out every frightening mask it could marshal, one after the other, from the terrible that remains grandiose to the terrible that verges on the grotesque, from Tiberius to the bogeyman. Thus, in speaking of Bonaparte, you were free to sob or to gasp with laughter, provided your reaction was based on hate.
”
”
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
“
He wants me to go to a party. I haven’t been to a party since Kenny Smith from next door invited me to his birthday when we were eight, and that ended with me getting pushed into his pool and laughed at all the way home.
Can I think about it?
Yeah, of course.
I’m not going. I like to tell myself I might go—I like to tell myself I might do a lot of things—but I and my brain and everyone else know that I’m going to chicken out in the end and barricade myself in my bedroom with a plate of pizza rolls and my Netflix subscription.
”
”
Francesca Zappia (Eliza and Her Monsters)
“
Eight Years Old, Eighteen Years Old
Cassidy was barely conscious when the March Hare, finally finished, gingerly lifted her onto her stump and gently slid a teacup onto her finger. She strained her senses and thought she heard a long sigh and the creak of old bones as he settled at the other end of the table. He stayed there with her through the night. Every time she struggled to open her eyes, she'd see him, the ghostly outline of white ears against the threatening shadows.
Perhaps he had killed her after all. Perhaps he hadn't. There was only one thing Cassidy Evans knew for sure: It had been a marvelous tea party.
”
”
Carrie Ryan (Slasher Girls & Monster Boys)
“
former U.S. senator Alan Simpson from Wyoming. Simpson had spent eighteen years in the Senate, including ten as the Republican whip, the second-ranking senator in his party. He had also been a former juvenile felon. He had been adjudicated as a juvenile delinquent when he was seventeen, for multiple convictions for arson, theft, aggravated assault, gun violence, and, finally, assaulting a police officer. He later confessed: “I was a monster.” His life didn’t begin to change until he found himself imprisoned in “a sea of puke and urine” following another arrest. Senator Simpson knew firsthand that you cannot judge a person’s full potential by his juvenile misconduct.
”
”
Bryan Stevenson (Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption)
“
Social justice warriors, on the other hand, caught Steve Martin calling Carrie Fisher “beautiful” in a tweet and made him take it down. I’m not making that up. Here’s Steve’s offensive tweet: “When I was a young man, Carrie Fisher was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. She turned out to be witty and bright as well.” How could he! Steve, we thought we knew you, but this? You noted her appearance first, and then that she was witty and bright? What a monster. This has become a hallmark of stupid wokeness: getting offended for people who themselves would not be offended. Democrats have gone from the party that protects people to the party that protects feelings. From “Ask not what your country can do for you” to “You owe me an apology.
”
”
Bill Maher (What This Comedian Said Will Shock You)
“
This is who I write about and who I write for. For the girls they were, for the girl I was, for girls everywhere who are just like we used to be. For the black and brown girls. For the girls on the merry-go-round making the world spin. For the wild girls and the party girls, the loudmouths and the troublemakers. For the girls who are angry and lost. For the girls who never saw themselves in books. For the girls who love girls, sometimes in secret. For the girls who believe in monsters. For the girls on the edge who are ready to fly. For the ordinary girls. For all the girls who broke my heart. And their mothers. And their daughters. And if I could reach back through time and space to that girl I was, to all my girls, I would tell you to take care, to love each other, fight less, dance dance dance until you're breathless. And goddamn, girl. Live.
”
”
Jaquira Díaz (Ordinary Girls)
“
Bryce couldn’t stop the sob that wrenched its way out of her. “You’re free, Lehabah.” The words rippled through the library as Bryce wept. “I traded with Jesiba for your freedom last week. I have the papers in my desk. I wanted to throw a party for it—to surprise you.” The bathroom door began warping, bending. Bryce sobbed, “I bought you, and now I set you free, Lehabah.” Lehabah’s smile didn’t falter. “I know,” she said. “I peeked in your drawer.” And despite the monster trying to break loose behind them, Bryce choked on a laugh before she begged, “You are a free person—you do not have to do this. You are free, Lehabah.” Yet Lehabah remained at the foot of the stairs. “Then let the world know that my first act of freedom was to help my friends.” Syrinx shifted in Bryce’s arms, a low, pained sound breaking from him. Bryce thought it might be the sound her own soul was making as she whispered, unable to bear this choice, this moment, “I love you, Lehabah.” The only words that ever mattered. “And I will love you always, BB.” The fire sprite breathed, “Go.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City, #1))
“
Ali major social entities such as nations, linguistic groups, rehgious communities, party organizations have been elevated to the dignity of the supreme collective that overshadows ali other collectives and claims the submission of the whole personality of ali rightthinking men. But an individual can renounce autonomous action and unconditionally surrender his self only in favor of one collective. Which collective this ought to be can be determined only by a quite arbitrary decision. The collective creed is by necessity exclusive and totalitarian. It craves the whole man and does not want to share him with any other collective. It seeks to establish the exclusive supreme validity of only one system of values.
There is, of course, but one way to make one's own judgments of value supreme. One must beat into submission ali those dissenting. This is what ali representatives of the various collectivist doctrines are striving for. They ultimately recommend the use of violence and pitiless annihilation of ali those whom they condemn as heretics. Collectivism is a doctrine of war, intolerance, and persecution. If any of the collectivist creeds should succeed in its endeavors, ali people but the great dictator would be deprived of their essential human quality. They would become mere soulless pawns in the hands of a monster.
”
”
Ludwig von Mises (Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution)
“
The scope of Trump’s commitment to whiteness is matched only by the depth of popular intellectual disbelief in it. We are now being told that support for Trump’s “Muslim ban,” his scapegoating of immigrants, his defenses of police brutality are somehow the natural outgrowth of the cultural and economic gap between Lena Dunham’s America and Jeff Foxworthy’s. The collective verdict holds that the Democratic Party lost its way when it abandoned commonsense everyday economic issues like job creation for the softer fare of social justice. The indictment continues: To their neoliberal economics, Democrats, and liberals at large, have married a condescending elitist affect that sneers at blue-collar culture and mocks white men as history’s greatest monster and prime time television’s biggest doofus. In this rendition, Donald Trump is not the product of white supremacy so much as the product of a backlash against contempt for white working people. “We so obviously despise them, we so obviously condescend to them,” Charles Murray, a conservative social scientist who co-wrote The Bell Curve, recently told The New Yorker’s George Packer. “The only slur you can use at a dinner party and get away with is to call somebody a redneck—that won’t give you any problems in Manhattan.” “The utter contempt with which privileged Eastern liberals such as myself discuss red-state, gun-country, working-class America as ridiculous and morons and rubes,” charged Anthony Bourdain, “is largely responsible for the upswell of rage and contempt and desire to pull down the temple that we’re seeing now.” That black people who’ve lived under centuries of such derision and condescension have not yet been driven into the arms of Trump does not trouble these theoreticians. After all, in this analysis Trump’s racism and the racism of his supporters are incidental to his rise. Indeed, the alleged glee with which liberals call out Trump’s bigotry is assigned even more power than the bigotry itself. Ostensibly assaulted by campus protests, battered by theories of intersectionality, throttled by bathroom rights, a blameless white working class did the only thing any reasonable polity might: elect an orcish reality television star who insists on taking his intelligence briefings in picture-book form.
”
”
Ta-Nehisi Coates (We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy)
“
The political parties represented in my constituency are the Monster Raving Loony Party, the Conservative Monster Raving Loony Party, the Labour Monster Raving Loony Party, the Liberal Democrat Monster Raving Loony Party, the Green Monster Raving Loony Party, and the UKIP Monster Raving Especially Loony Party.
”
”
Terry Ravenscroft (Stairlift to Heaven 4 - Still Hanging On)
“
Feeling numb during birthday parties for your kids or in response to the death of loved ones makes people feel like monsters. As a result, shame becomes the dominant emotion and hiding the truth the central preoccupation.
”
”
Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
“
That day he actually sat us down and lectured us about how important Mum was to him. 'Your wife will be like a mirror to you,' he said, 'expect she'll show you your true self. A man can be he life of the party at the pub with his mates and a monster at home to his wife. Who is his real self? Not the mask he wears in public but the soul he shows only to her.
”
”
Tiffany Reisz (The Pearl (The Godwicks, #3))
“
Who, me? He said it like I was a detective who always ran into murders wherever she went, or an anime protagonist who’s always stirring up chains of battles with powerful baddies. Nah, I was just your average fifteen-year-old girl in a bear onesie who’d been summoned to this other world by a god. The only trouble I’d stirred up was the tunnel to Mileela and the 10,000 monsters and the stuff at Misa’s birthday party when I’d gone to beat the crap out of people! Which, uh…hmm. Okay, considering how little time I’d actually been here, when you think about it, maybe that did count for a lot of incidents. Now I just felt guilty.
”
”
くまなの (Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear (Light Novel) Vol. 11)
“
What did that make Adam? Watching his dad choose the monster, seeing his brother lie down for the demon, how could he want to party too?
”
”
Ellen Hopkins (Crank (Crank, #1))
“
Instinct tells me to fall deep into a well of silence. Keep your meth-fired mouth shut, it commands. [Oh, just try that with the monster screaming, Let's party!]
”
”
Ellen Hopkins (Glass (Crank, #2))
“
There was no way to predict how people would take news that required them to shift their paradigms. Most of the time such news just bounced off them, the way horrific shite about a candidate bounces off a party’s faithful because they can’t face the fact that they voted for a monster and they may in fact be monsters themselves. Easier to just deny it all, call it fake news. No introspection required.
”
”
Kevin Hearne (Ink & Sigil (Ink & Sigil, #1))
“
the mutability of the past. He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable. What certainty had he that a single human creature now living was on his side? And what way of knowing that the dominion of the Party would not endure forever?
”
”
George Orwell (1984)
“
It’s not a tattoo people have on their foreheads labeling them as monsters. There’s this sliding scale to toxic masculinity. Over time you learn where these bros are on the scale. Do they make a couple of out of line comments and then backpedal when I call them out? Or are they the guys that make the waitress’s skin crawl by the way they talk to her? Do they think consent is optional and just a bunch of people being too sensitive? Then there are guys that just hide it well and you only see it slip every now and then. It’s confusing because, like Jake, getting women is not a problem for them. It’s not some resentment about rejection. It’s about conquering something, a need to dominate someone.
”
”
Danielle Stewart (The Girl at the Party)
“
1) A “Ladies Who Lunch Party” thrown at the country club. Waiters carried hors d’oeuvres around, kneeling on the ground so that the little girls could reach them. The lunch was nicer than Jane’s wedding shower, possibly nicer than her wedding. 2) A “Movie Premiere Party” where the entire theater was rented out and the kids were allowed as much popcorn and candy as they wanted while watching a double feature of Moana and Monsters, Inc. (Lauren threw up in her bed that night.) 3) A “Camping Party” where each child received a sleeping bag personalized with her name and the backyard was set up with mini pink tents and paper lanterns. Someone was hired to grill the hot dogs and make the s’mores. 4) A “Spa Party” at the Four Seasons downtown where the girls got facials and fluffy pink robes and slippers. (Because what first grader wouldn’t appreciate getting rid of clogged pores?)
”
”
Jennifer Close (Marrying the Ketchups)
“
I don’t hold you accountable for that.” Something tight eased in Hunt’s chest. He went on, “Okay, but the rest … They’re dangerous people. Worse than the Princes of Hel.” She chuckled. “You compare them like you know from experience.” He did. But he hedged, “I hunted demons for years. I know a monster when I see one. So when the Harpy and the Hawk and the Hind come for the mating party … I’m begging you to be careful. To protect the people of this city. We might give Baxian shit about standing by while Pollux terrorized people, but … I had to stand by, too. I’ve seen what Pollux does, what he delights in. The Harpy is his female counterpart. The Hawk is secretive and dangerous. And the Hind …” “I know very well what manner of threat Lidia Cervos poses.” Even Archangels feared the Hind. What she might learn. And Celestina, secret friend to Shahar, who still cared about her friend centuries later, who carried the guilt of not helping …
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City, #2))
“
Among his peers and devotees, Leary is legendary for his Herculean ability to ingest frequent doses of extraordinarily potent LSD without ever being gripped by the monster of panic—the Great Fear that overwhelms so many users. His friends chalk it up to his sweeping intellect, his ability to outwit fear; or maybe it’s just his Irish pluck letting him mock the demons. He can take hit after hit of pure LSD and appear to be perfectly normal, whether he’s trading jokes with a glib TV talk show host or charming a millionaire hostess at a lavish dinner party in San Francisco. Leary grows more lucid on LSD, laughing easily as he becomes the smartest, wisest, most superior person in any setting.
”
”
Bill Minutaglio (Most Dangerous Man in America: Timothy Leary, Richard Nixon and the Hunt for the Fugitive King of LSD)
“
reddie still looked angry. But not at her. “Go on.” Tilted his chin at water. “Hunt.”
Hunt. Yes. She knew that. Understood that. Not like so much on land.
She sank underwater. Heard Freddie’s voice again. Loud. Commanding. Like alpha. “Showtime!”
Perdita grinned. Felt excited. And felt normal for the first time in too long. Let herself sink. The tip of her tail brushed the sand. She halted. Turned her face above. Moments passed. She could pretend she was home again. Silence. Indigo waters. Diamond lights dancing above her. Felt the same rush that always came with hunts. Different this time. There would be prey. But no companions. Unnatural.
Her heart lurched. Almost physical pain. Home.
Her pack. Heart ached again. She wondered if alphas had sent a search party. Or if they had moved on. Putting their survival first. Perdita could not blame them if they had. Every day was a fight. Fight to stay alive. Fight for food. For territory. To breathe the cleanest water they could find. To flee from monsters that bled poison.
”
”
Minerva Hart (Primal Instinct)
“
The Journey after the End
It was an era of monsters and demon
Where villages burned, with echoes of cry
Eyes filled with darkness, voices filled with sermon
Pain and suffering was neigh
A party of heroes swept the ashes, took an oath
With swords and sheath and prayer and sorcery
They faced the satan, filled with might and loath
All with firm resolve and unwavering chivalry
The heroes survived, the peace arrived
Everyone promised, a last reunion plan was made
With everyone on and up, they went with their life swayed
Though they said their goodbyes and died
The elven mage was all but left behind
She continued her travels along the river of time
Forging new bonds, while breaking some
She had come far away, yet she weeps sometime
For the epoch is cruel, as how it reminds her of the telltales and glum
”
”
Dishebh Bhayana
“
trial and error. Other experimenters recorded the visual fields of target subjects exposed to the color red. Trainees who learned, through feedback, to approximate that same neural activity reported seeing red in their mind’s eye. Since those days, the field had shifted from visual learning to emotional conditioning. The big grant money was going to desensitizing people with PTSD. DecNef and Connectivity Feedback were being touted as treatments to all kinds of psychiatric disorders. Marty Currier worked on clinical applications. But he was also pursuing a more exotic side-hustle. “Why not?” I told my wife. And so we volunteered in her friend’s experiment. IN THE RECEPTION AREA OF CURRIER’S LAB, Aly and I chuckled over the entrance questionnaire. We would be among the second wave of target subjects, but first we had to pass the screening. The questions disguised furtive motives. HOW OFTEN DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE PAST? WOULD YOU RATHER BE ON A CROWDED BEACH OR IN AN EMPTY MUSEUM? My wife shook her head at these crude inquiries and touched a hand to her smile. I read the expression as clearly as if we were wired up together: The investigators were welcome to anything they discovered inside her, so long as it didn’t lead to jail time. I’d given up on understanding my own hidden temperament a long time ago. Lots of monsters inhabited my sunless depths, but most of them were nonlethal. I did badly want to see my wife’s answers, but a lab tech prevented us from comparing questionnaires. DO YOU USE TOBACCO? Not for years. I didn’t mention that all my pencils were covered with bite marks. HOW MUCH ALCOHOL DO YOU DRINK A WEEK? Nothing for me, but my wife confessed to her nightly Happy Hour, while plying the dog with poetry. DO YOU SUFFER FROM ANY ALLERGIES? Not unless you counted cocktail parties. HAVE YOU EVER EXPERIENCED DEPRESSION? I didn’t know how to answer that one. DO YOU PLAY A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT? Science. I said I might be able to find middle C on a piano, if they needed it. Two postdocs took us into the fMRI room. These people had way more cash to throw around than any astrobiology team anywhere. Aly was having the same thoughts
”
”
Richard Powers (Bewilderment)
“
Brandy stood up and tossed the bits of eggshell to the ground. She flashed Mom her best dimpled smile. “Next year for my birthday, can we have a Make Your Own Ice-Cream Sundae party?
”
”
R.L. Stine (Egg Monsters from Mars (Goosebumps, #42))
“
Now Des Moines looked like the aftermath of some monster New Year’s Eve party after sodden sleep had claimed the last of the revelers.
”
”
Stephen King (The Stand)
“
You okay, Ruthie?" Oh, just throwing up in my mouth. "Did she just give you her number?" He chuckles. "Indeed. She insisted I write down her contact information so I can send her a message." Isn't that cute. "Lucky you." Kazex's smile fades as he studies me. "You sure you're all right? You look troubled." I hate seeing the happiness fade from his face. I hate that I'm the big party pooper for the day. It just makes how I'm feeling worse. I'm the problem, not Kazex. He doesn't owe me anything. "I ate something that disagreed with me. Tell the others I'm going back to the ship, all right?" A look of concern crosses his face. "I'll come with you—" I put a hand up, silencing him. He's going to be kind and friendly and patient like he always is, and I'll just lose it even more. "I don't need you." When he flinches, I feel like a monster. God, I'm just making this worse by the moment. "I'm going back alone. You find the others. I'll see you back home.
”
”
Ruby Dixon (Only the Clonely (Sunrise Cantina, #1))
“
I am a man, I want to change the world! … no, not a “want.” I NEED to!
This sacred fire in my soul, it can’t be wasted; that I know.
Which role is mine? Those men in charge – what monsters!
And what fools! “To serve all parties” – not for me; but what am I to do? My secret terror: when I’m gone, no one will notice…
”
”
Dr. Jasmine (Love, Demystified)
“
Some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don’t need much encouragement at all to become monsters.
”
”
Lucy Foley (The Hunting Party)
“
Lavish parties, hot guys, and a mystery to solve!
”
”
Rebecca F. Kenney (Beautiful Villain (Gilded Monsters, #1))
“
For the first generations to confront the reality of dinosaurs, much of the fascination with the towering creatures had the same tangled roots that it does for six-year-olds today. These were the ideal sort of monsters—big, scary, and, best of all, dead.
”
”
Edward Dolnick (Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party: How an Eccentric Group of Victorians Discovered Prehistoric Creatures and Accidentally Upended the World)
“
Recoiling backwards from the horror, his flight catapulted him headlong over the rail of the balcony. His piercing scream drowned out the uproarious Happy Birthday greeting from his wife, friends, and neighbors flooding into the hallway and the living room to begin the celebration. In midair, when someone turned on the lights in the dining room, Gary saw the monster from the master bedroom pulling off her rubber mask and looking down at him from the railing with sad eyes. It was Janine, his next-door neighbor. In the seconds before Gary lost consciousness after breaking his neck on the ceramic tile floor, he saw the entire room fill with balloons and confetti. Gwen looked ravishing in her favorite cocktail dress blowing a noisemaker and tossing a streamer into the air. A huge banner with the words, “Happy Halloween, Gary on Your 40th Birthday… A Night To Remember” was the last thing he saw before the grim reaper gobbled him up. Gwen had done it again. She had planned a truly memorable party that no one in attendance would ever forget. Gary died on the same day he was born, October 31.
”
”
Billy Wells (Don't Look Behind You)
“
While we sat at the bar, Dave told me the most important advice about talking to women I had ever received, and that was to be as relaxed as possible and not fear rejection. Dave then began hooking up with some girl who looked like a hybrid of Rosie O’Donnell and Miss Piggy, leaving me alone to ponder his words.”
“When I was in 8th grade, there was this girl named Sandra who I used to ride the school bus with. Sandra was about 5’2, 120 lbs, and looked like the Hamburglar. She was the prettiest girl in my class.”
“In my mind I was the life of the party and felt as though I could do no wrong when it came to interacting with the opposite sex. That was until Marissa caught me red handed hooking up with some girl who looked like a combination of John Madden and Andre the Giant, tapping me on the shoulder and kicking me square in the nuts.”
“I was starting to feel bad about how I treated women. Oh wait, no I wasn’t. The girls at Binghamton were nothing more than a bunch of dumb sluts that just wanted to get drunk and suck dick, and besides, they were all going to make a lot more money than me in the future. So I may as well catch brains while these bitches were dumb enough to blow me.”
“Out of all the people I could’ve stumbled into blackout drunk, why did it have to be THE MOOSE? As son as she saw me her 300 lb frame waddled over, and she jammed her tongue down my throat, devouring me as though I were a Big Mac. This was embarrassing. Here I was making out with some girl who looked like Eric Cartman in a dress, and everybody was watching. My life was effectively over.”
“After annihilating Ruben’s toilet, I looked over my shoulder for some much-needed toilet paper, when to my shock and dismay there was not a single sheet of paper in sight. There’s no way in hell I was rejoining the party covered in poop and I would have wiped my ass with anything. That’s when I noticed his New York Yankees bath towel.”
“I spent the rest of my week off getting completely shitfaced with Chris, and that’s when I realized I might be developing a drinking problem. At Bar None, hooking up with some girl who looked like the Loch Ness Monster; this shit had to stop. Alcohol was turning me into a drunken mess, and I vowed right then and there to quit drinking and start smoking more weed immediately.”
“I got a new roommate. His name was Erick and he was an ex-marine. Erick and I didn’t know each other, but he knew Kevin, and he also knew that I didn’t shower and that last semester I left a used condom on the floor for two weeks without throwing it away. Eric therefore did not want to live with me.”
“Believe it or not, I got another job working with the disabled. See, Manny was nice enough to hook me up with a position as a job coach at the Lavelle School for the Blind. The kid’s name was Fred and he was blind with cerebral palsy. Fred loved dogs and I loved smoking week. Bad combination, and I was fired with 3 days left in the program after allowing Fred to run across the street into oncoming traffic, because I had smoked a bowl an hour earlier. Manny and I never spoke again.”
“My life was a dream and a nightmare rolled into one. Here I was living this carefree existence, getting drunk, boning bitches, and playing Sega Genesis in between. Oh wait, what am I talking about? My life was awesome. It’s the rest of my life that’s going to suck.
”
”
Alexander Strenger
“
That dog’s smarter than I am.” She winked at Ash, and Ashley giggled. Then she left the house. Kristin gazed through the window and in the near distance, saw Rick, Madison, Danny and Quincy on their boat coming into dock. She immediately understood what her daughter hadn’t voiced. The dog’s real family was here now. Ashley would be left out. “The hordes will want lunch, so I’ve got to leave,” said Cathy. “I came over to invite you guys to supper. We’ll grill outside - very informal. I hope you can make it.” Kristin did not have a social calendar, but neither was she sure about having Rick’s “hands-on” family in her personal life. Still, after last night’s get together, it was probably too late for keeping many secrets. “What can we bring to the party?” “Oh, goody!” Cathy was back in form. “Rick will be happy.” The two women walked outside in time to see Quincy race toward Ashley and cover her with kisses. “Ugh!” Ashley protested. “You’re all wet and yucky, Quince.” She stepped back. “You would be too if you kept jumping in the lake for a swim.” Rick joined them, tee shirt soaked, hair standing on end. Eyes bright. He jerked his head toward his sister. “From now on, it’s either the hound or your monsters. Not both.” She punched him lightly on the arm. “Sure, sure, sure. When I see it, I’ll believe it. Ricky, the kids play you the way you play a fish - pulling in the line, letting it out, pulling it in until they catch you. And they always catch you.” She grinned at Kristin. “A real fish might escape, but this fish doesn’t have a chance with the kids. He
”
”
Linda Barrett (Summer at the Lake (Flying Solo #1))
“
When are voters in both political parties going to realize that politics is a two-way street? The politician creates a powerful, huge, heavy, and unstoppable Monster Truck of a government. Then supporters of that politician become shocked and weepy when another politician, whom they detest, gets behind the wheel, turns the truck around, and runs them over.
”
”
P.J. O'Rourke (How the Hell Did This Happen?: The Election of 2016)
“
Who the fuck throws beholders at a first level party?” I snapped. “The whole concept of a random monster encounter is that it neither need be fair nor level appropriate.
”
”
Rick Gualtieri (The Wicked Dead (The Tome of Bill, #7))
“
He reaches out for the cup on the sink, and I notice the thin lines on his wrists. It's only now that he's not wearing a jumper in the bright, unnatural kitchen light that I can see them. He sees me looking. "Life's a party." I don't say anything and he laughs, tapping me on the arm before getting another cup for himself and making the tea.
”
”
Alison Evans (Long Macchiatos and Monsters)
“
That's a peculiarly Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, in the English speaking world and the United States. One dream of anarchism—and the only kind that survived—was ultra-right anarchism, which you see in the libertarian parry, which is just loved by the big corporations and the investment firms and so on. Not that they believe in it. They know perfectly well that they'll never get rid of the state because they need it for their own purposes, but they love to use this as an ideological weapon against everyone else. So the libertarian parry is very warmly accepted within mainstream business circles who really ridicule it privately because they know perfectly well that they're not going to survive without a massive state subsidy, so they want a powerful state. But they like the libertarian ideology which they can use as a battering ram against everyone else. If you actually pursued the ideals of the libertarian party you would create the worst totalitarian monster that the world has ever seen. Actually, I have lots of personal friends there. For years, the only journals I could write in were ultra-right libertarian journals because we agree on a lot of things. For example, we agree on the opposition to American imperialism. For example, nobody would publish the first article that I was able to write on East Timor. They published it, back in the late seventies. That's the only article that appeared in the United States on the subject in the seventies. They also published many other things and we remained personal friends. Although there is a big area of difference.
”
”
Noam Chomsky (Chomsky On Anarchism)
“
Who let you in?” asked the Party-Monster.
“Your mom,” said Linda. “You still live with your mom, by the way? There’s nothing wrong with still living with your folks, of course there’s not, but you still live with them like this? You’re not a teenager anymore, Kevin.”
“Party-Monster,” said the Party-Monster somewhat feebly.
“You’re a grown-up,” Linda continued. “Do you have a job? Or is Party-Monstering a full-time occupation?”
The Party-Monster didn’t answer.
“So you don’t have a job, then. You live with your folks, you don’t clean your room, you probably never even open a window in here, and you don’t pay your own way.”
Kelly shook her head sadly. “Oh, Party-Monster …
”
”
Derek Landy
“
The generation that had grown up with R.E.M. in the Eighties, that had enthusiastically shared and applauded the maturity of Out of Time and Automatic for the People, many of whom had stuck around for Monster, was ready now to move on. Not to new artists, but to their home mortgages, car payments, and children's birthday parties.
”
”
Tony Fletcher (The Story of Rem Remarks)
“
Light bulbs up the ass, no big deal!" you say. "On a good night I can fit a Butterball and two sweet potatoes up my bum!"
Aye--But here's the rub:
How did these bulbs come to shine so brightly? They weren't plugged into an electrical socket...
An hour before her performance, Ida lay spread-eagle on the ground, and she had a helping hand (and how) slowly, carefully, millimeter by millimeter--INSERT A BATTERY PACK INTO HER UPPER INTESTINE.
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
When I told my mother the extremes I went to in order to make a living, she just shook her head and said, "Now don't you wish you'd finished college, dear?"
Mother's are so wise, sometimes.
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
It is very easy to speak abstractly in a bar or at a cocktail party about how tough one thinks the laws should be, but perhaps one should wait until they have actually been wrongfully accused to fully formulate that opinion. __________________
”
”
Sam L. Amirante (John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster)
“
This man has been going to private parties and stealing people’s jewelry.” Dad said.
”
”
David Chuka (The Billy and Monster Collection - Funny Books for Kids)
“
Now that his children are grown, Cliff misses that special time when they were young with proportionately large eyes filled with wonder (the eye supposedly is the only human body part that remains the same size from birth). Although he longs for grandchildren to gift his life someday, he has the great fortune of a customer base that is forever young and a monster truck that puts smiles on the faces of adults as well as children. What’s not to like about that?
”
”
Cliff Fictor (A Monster Truck for Johnny)
“
Does a baby born on New Year’s Eve end up being a real party monster? I
”
”
Amy Poehler (Yes Please)
“
If the food supply runs out, try trapping or hunting animals. For most people, this won't be easy. If you can't catch any animals, it's time to throw a Donner party.
”
”
Andrew Shaffer (How to Survive a Sharknado and Other Unnatural Disasters: Fight Back When Monsters and Mother Nature Attack)
“
To understand what is happening in the current global lockstep of tyranny, we must understand that certain subcultures, certain leaders, and certain ideologies simply don’t have our core values at heart; and we must face the fact that these monsters are not just Nazis long dead or members of the CCP far away. Some monsters are very near to us. Some monsters wear lovely suits and chat away about their kids at dinner parties. And some kinds of monstrosity and sociopathy are actively cultivated by the norms and within networks that are all around us, albeit half-hidden at elite levels and systematized and accepted at
”
”
Naomi Wolf (The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and The War Against the Human)
“
Chevy hosted the second show, and we were all so excited because, to us, Chevy was like a god. This was someone returning who’d been one of the original people and was this legendary figure. And we were just excited to work with him. And when he got there, he was a monster. I mean, he insulted everybody. He said to Robert Downey, Jr., “Didn’t your father used to be a successful director? Whatever happened to him? Boy, he sure died, you know, he sure went to hell.” Downey turned ashen. And then Chevy turned to me and he said, “Oh, you’re the gay guy, right?” And he goes, “I’ve got an idea for a sketch for you. How about we say you have AIDS and we weigh you every week?” It was out of place. So then he ended up having to apologize and actually coming to my office. He was really furious that he had to apologize to me. He was just beside himself. And it was just awful. He acted horribly to me. He acted horribly to everyone. When he got on the elevator at the end of the night—you know, we all go to the party afterwards—and everybody saw him coming, we hid. We wouldn’t be on the elevator with him. We were all hiding. We were plastered against the wall going, “Oh, he’s getting on the elevator, he’s almost gone. Oh, he’s gone.” No one wanted to be near him. I don’t know what he was on or what was happening to him mentally, but he was just crazy.
”
”
Tom Shales (Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests)
“
Some of the villagers were excellent cooks. They made baked potatoes, cakes, rabbit stews and steaks. It was all so delicious, and I totally pigged out. I was being a little fatty, but I didn’t care. We deserved it. We had earned it after all that digging and building. So, I ate to my heart’s content. Then I partied and mingled with everyone. Not before long, night came upon us. We were all standing outside when we heard the noises from monsters increase little by little. Everyone was anxious and worried about the monsters breaking through the dirt wall. So, I ran to the top of the tower to check out the enemy. From my elevation, I saw the horde of monsters outside our newly built wall. They were clawing and
”
”
Steve the Noob (Diary of Steve the Noob)
“
SlumberPartyPopaDaisySugarMelon
DrinkWaterNotAtKingsDoLoveaTeddy
MerryHappyPopaPipiJumboTumbo
LumboSamboDidoFidoDidilyDidily
TutiTutiPataPatiPatuPari
DumDimDumDamDumDammerDammerDum
PullyPullerPullyPullyPullerPullyPully
PullyPullerPullyPullyPullyPullerPie
OhDodidodadidolidododidododo.
”
”
Elisa Anderson (The Very Long Named Monster : A compilation of short illustrated bedtime stories with moral lessons (For preschoolers ages 3-5 and above ): A collection of interesting tales for your kids)
“
contrast, despite the moral and financial bankruptcy of Wall Street, the Obama administration had shrunk from a decisive confrontation with money power. The consequences, Krugman believed, were serious: ‘My sense is that in the face of this catastrophe, people needed some sign, a kind of symbolic sense of who was to blame.’71 By failing to define an enemy, Obama helped create a political monster, the Tea Party, ‘that’s now come and bitten him. If you’re not going to point fingers at the people who actually caused the problem, then those fingers may end up pointed at you.
”
”
Richard Bourke (History in the Humanities and Social Sciences)
“
the most notable instance being that which is described in Adamnan's famous 6th century Life of St Columba. There we read that in the year AD 565, Columba, on yet another of his missionary journeys north, needed to cross the river Ness. As he was about to do so, he saw a burial party. On enquiry, he was informed that they were burying a man who had just been killed by a savage bite from a monster which had snatched him while swimming. On hearing this, and with never a thought for his own safety, the brave saint immediately ordered one of his followers to jump into the freezing water to see if the monster was still in the vicinity. Adamnan relates how the thrashing about of the alarmed and unhappy swimmer, Lugne Mocumin by name, attracted the monster's attention. Suddenly, on breaking the surface, the monster was seen to speed towards the luckless chap with its mouth wide open and screaming like a banshee. Columba, however, refused to panic, and from the safety of the dry land rebuked the beast. Whether the swimmer added any rebukes of his own is not recorded, but the monster was seen to turn away, having approached the swimmer so closely that not the length of a punt-pole lay between them.
”
”
Bill Cooper (After the Flood)
“
I want to move on from the men we call monsters and start talking about the greyer space. The smaller acts of shame transmission. The ones we cannot pinpoint because they do not have a beginning or an end: a jury's verdict, a healed bruise. They are just moments. They come and they go, and we think they don't hurt us, but they do.
I want to move on from the men we call monsters because I am tired of talking about them. I want to talk about us.
I want to talk about the moments after the shame transmission, the whole life that is lived afterwards, and how all the other shame transmissions cumulate until the false self is a necessary weapon. I want to connect the emotionally abusive boyfriend that we make excuses for to the boy who came before him who was too pushy at the party and to the Tuesday morning wolf-whistler who came after. I want us to understand that carrying other people's shame affects a whole life. I want us to keep watching the woman after the bad thing happens, after the secret has been locked away. I want us to see how it keeps affecting her even though she wishes it wouldn't. I want to connect the rape to the illness to the aggressive Hinge date to the screaming argument with a man you thought you were safe with.
”
”
Lucia Osborne-Crowley (My Body Keeps Your Secrets)
“
I was walking all along just going for a walk outside after the party, I just felt good, I didn’t know if I wanted to sing, dance, and or cry; I was that happy getting to be with Marcel, so I went to my spot in the old car in the junkyard. I have to jump the face and rip my tank top or something like that yet it worth it, to see my dream car, sitting there I not a girlie girl but I love this cute thing it's sex looking like me. I found this old car at colleen’s junkyard it like right next door, I freak’n loved this old piece of crap, I even had sex with myself in the back seat, I took the old hood ornament off myself and keep it, my dad said it was off of Neveah’s dad's car, yet it was given to my mom and that why it just sitting outside for all the kids like me to rip the parts off of and sell on eBay.
My stepmom hated Kristen, my real mother, so that is why the car ended up where it’s at, it was passed down yet the step-monster made sure I would never have it. My stepdad said the emblem is of a 1950 Nash that I found, little did I know it doesn’t go on that car yet, I think it’s a good fit, I was getting the car on my eighteenth birthday- I freaked up and had to die, just like me in the graveyard we both are retreating away.
My stepdads had the 1950 Nash which he said was the first real sports car and it’s all steel, so I put it back on without him knowing that I did, funny maybe that's why I passed doing something like that… it was like it was meant for that car, or so he said and I did also. There is an old fender off what likes to be some old ford over there too that is rusty red, I am not sure of the year it’s too damn old for me to know. I remember right my dad said that grand-ma Nevaeh went to school in something like a 1965 Cadillac Deville convertible, yet, I don’t see that she had like nothing, I don’t know what that thing is. Like with these old cars, don't think you have a seat belt, you just cracked your head off the dash of the Nash and then they wiped it off, and sold it to some other poor ass hole.
”
”
Marcel Ray Duriez (Nevaeh They Call Out)
“
I wasn’t… I’m not like that, the girl you met at that party. I’ve never killed anyone before in my life.” “Well, we all start somewhere, love.
”
”
Sav R. Miller (Oaths and Omissions (Monsters & Muses, #3))
“
I’m surprised to see you here, though. Without a pair of handcuffs, that is.” “I can assure you my bedroom habits have nothing to do with what parties I attend.
”
”
Sav R. Miller (Oaths and Omissions (Monsters & Muses, #3))
“
He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable. What certainty had he that a single human creature now living was on his side? And what way of knowing that the dominion of the Party would not endure forever?
”
”
George Orwell (1984)
“
The obscene laws that constitute apartheid are not crazed edicts issued by a dictator, nor the whims of a megalomanic monster, nor the one-man decisions of a fanatical ideologue. They are the result of polite caucus discussions by hundreds of delegates in sober suits, after full debate in party congresses. They are passed after three solemn readings in a parliament that opens every day’s proceedings with a prayer to Jesus Christ. There is a special horror in that fact.
”
”
Donald Woods (Biko: The powerful biography of Steve Biko and the struggle of the Black Consciousness Movement)
“
While I was getting boogers wiped in my hair during Biology, he was being spit on in Social Studies.
A common story.
But there was a day, a sunny day in May, I’m sure, when at exactly 2 P.M., we both looked out of the window of our different schools and … What?
We didn’t wish—wishes are wasted …
We didn’t hope—because our future was inevitable …
And we didn’t pray—we were on our own.
So we sent out energy bullets: “This is for New York.”
“This is for when I get there.”
Little pockets of energy, to be saved and accumulated and used upon arrival.
I was so scared it was all going to be gone by the time I got there. Ninth grade, tenth grade—can’t this thing go any faster?
In the magazine, there were funny people with funny names like John Sex, who had wild white hair and a snake!—and didn’t that just open up a kaleidoscope of new possibilities?
And how long the years are—endless! And the minutiae of your daily life! So tedious, when there are BIG THINGS happening a thousand miles away. And when you go to bed at night, it’s hard to believe those people, those fabulous, daunting people, are out there right now!
So we wait, and we endure, and someday we will be there, and we will make it.
And, by golly, we did.
”
”
James St James (Party Monster: A fabulous but true tale of murder in clubland)
“
It says something about the mood of the time that a New Labour government with an overwhelming parliamentary majority and nearly 11 million voters at the 2001 elections should nonetheless have been moved to respond in this way to the propaganda of a neo-Fascist clique which attracted the support of just 48,000 electors in the country at large: one-fifth of 1 percent of the vote and only 40,000 more votes than the Monster Raving Loony Party. France
”
”
Tony Judt (Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945)
“
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever without the written and signed permission of the author. All trademarked names are the property of their owner and are acknowledged by the proper use of capitalization throughout. OTHER ‘Game on Boys’ BOOKS Available on Amazon as eBooks or print books Game on Boys 4 can be read separately or part of a series FREE ebook Game on Boys 1:The PlayStation Playoffs(8-12) Game on Boys 2 : Minecraft Madness (8-12) Game on Boys 3 : NO Girls Allowed Game on Boys 5 : House of Horrors Game on Boys 6 : Galactic Zombie Other books by Kate Cullen FREE Diary Of a Wickedly Cool Witch : Bullies and Baddies(8-13) Boyfriend Stealer : Diary of a Wickedly Cool Witch 2 (8-13) Diary of a Wickedly Cool Witch 3 : Perfect Ten (8-13) Diary of a Wickedly Cool Witch 4 : Witch School for Misfits Lucy goes to the Halloween Party (Early readers) Lucy the Easter Dog (Early readers) Lucy's Merry Christmas Sammy McGann and the Secret Soup People (5-10) Follow KATE on TWITTER at Kate Cullen @ katekate5555 Or email gameonboysseries@gmail.com to receive email updates. (Copy and paste) Or visit her website for new books and giveaways Kate Cullen author website Contents 1. Wow 2. BYODD 3. Secrets 4. News 5. Brats 6. Santa 7. Wishing 8. Blocky 9. Monsters 10. Wolverine 11. Creepy. 12. Arachnophobia 13. Fartblaster 14. Superhero 15. Enderman 16. Teleporting 17. Lost 18. Potions 19. Scared 20. Spells 21. Fireworks 22. Homecoming 1. WOW You know how awesome Christmas is, and birthdays are sick as, Easter is just a big fat chocolate splurge, and even Thanksgiving is like pig-out insanity. Weekends are kinda cool too, but holidays are totally far out man. And when a new PS game comes out and they have a midnight release extravaganza at the game store, it’s like crazy time, coolness overload. All these things are the main reason I exist on this earth. Without all this stuff, life would just SUCK big time. But nothing, I repeat NOTHING comes close to the Christmas I just had. WOW! I repeat WOW! Where do I even start? This Christmas was a like a dream come true. Actually it was sort of like a nightmare too, if that makes any sense. A dream and a nightmare mixed up into one. Totally far out man. Totally gobsmacking, totally awesome, but totally freaking scary. So you’re probably thinking like I won a million bucks or something and then got mugged, or the owner of Sony PlayStation company sent me 1000 free PS games, and then the house got robbed at gunpoint. Or even better, the owner made me the new boss of the Sony PlayStation company. Yeah right! Like that will ever happen! In my dreams!! Although, after what happened, I’m thinking that absolutely anything is possible. 2. BYODD The last day at school before Christmas break was awesome. We had a BYOD day in the afternoon. The first part of the day we had to do all the boring Christmassy stuff like making soppy cards for our families, coloring pictures of Santa and doing boring word searches looking for words like (DER) ‘Santa, Christmas, present, jingle, stocking’. Like BORING. Capital ‘B’ Boring. Why can’t Christmas word finds have proper Christmas words like, console, iPhone 6, PlayStation games, Star wars, BMX, Nerf Modulous Blaster, Thunderblast, Star Wars darth vader vehicle, lego Star Wars Death star?
”
”
Kate Cullen (GAME ON BOYS : Minecraft Superhero : Christmas Gaming adventure for Middle-grade kids (Game on Boys Series Book 4))
“
Lenin had created the conditions for the rise of Stalin, but like Dr Frankenstein the monster outgrew him. He suffered a cerebral haemorrhage on 24 May 1922 and from this time forward his involvement in political affairs was sporadic. Too late he realised, on 25 December 1922, that Stalin represented a real threat to the stability of the Party. He penned a postscript to his famous “Testament”. This called for the removal of Stalin as General Secretary but significantly not from the Politburo. Despite Lenin’s request, the “Testament” was only discussed in the Central Committee, and Stalin’s offer to resign as General Secretary was rejected by Zinoviev and Kamenev. They had now formed a triumvirate with him, and during Lenin’s illness Zinoviev had assumed nominal leadership of the Party. Fearing that any demotion of Stalin would lead to the elevation of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev not only supported him, but hushed up the letters of Lenin.
”
”
Jock Dominie (Russia: Revolution and Counter-Revolution, 1905-1924. A View from the Communist Left)
“
A couple of coworkers and I went to see the movie Collateral one evening. When we came back to the office around 11:00 (to go back to work), we ran into Chris Metzen sitting in the hallway. Upper management was making an effort to stay late with the team to show solidarity, and tonight was Chris’s night. He was playing the new beta and preparing for the final boss fight in Gnomeregan. Dungeon crawls were far more intense than anything he was used to, and he told the people standing behind his desk that he actually felt nervous before the fight. “Dude, my heart is pumping so hard right now, I’m gonna have a fucking heart attack. Just look at my hands, they’re shaking. I’ve never been so nervous about a game before this!” As his party prepared to fight the Gnomeregan end boss monster, Mekgineer Thermaplugg, Chris typed, “Remember guys, he’s just a gnome!” After a heated battle, Chris died screaming, seconds before the boss collapsed. This was before players received postmortem credit for kills, so Chris couldn’t complete his dungeon quest. He was so disappointed, he immediately went home. When I told Jeff what had happened the next morning, he laughed and replied, “Ouch. That really sucks. We should give kill-credit to everyone in the party, dead or alive.
”
”
John Staats (The World of Warcraft Diary: A Journal of Computer Game Development)
“
All he’s ever said is that he wants things to go back to the way they were before, when Euronext came to his house for parties and no one thought he was a monster. He could have been angry with you for the lies you told about him, but he isn’t. Even after everything, he wants to be part of this village, and I think that makes him a better person than any of us, don’t you?
”
”
Kereen Getten (When Life Gives You Mangos)
“
Getting It Right"
Your ankles make me want to party,
want to sit and beg and roll over
under a pair of riding boots with your ankles
hidden inside, sweating beneath the black tooled leather;
they make me wish it was my birthday
so I could blow out their candles, have them hung
over my shoulders like two bags
full of money. Your ankles are two monster-truck engines
but smaller and lighter and sexier
than a saucer with warm milk licking the outside edge;
they make me want to sing, make me
want to take them home and feed them pasta,
I want to punish them for being bad
and then hold them all night long and say I’m sorry, sugar, darling,
it will never happen again, not
in a million years. Your thighs make me quiet. Make me want to be
hurled into the air like a cannonball
and pulled down again like someone being pulled into a van.
Your thighs are two boats burned out
of redwood trees. I want to go sailing. Your thighs, the long breath of them under the blue denim of your high-end jeans,
could starve me to death, could make me cry and cry.
Your ass is a shopping mall at Christmas,
a holy place, a hill I fell in love with once
when I was falling in love with hills.
Your ass is a string quartet,
the northern lights tucked tightly into bed
between a high-count-of-cotton sheets.
Your back is the back of a river full of fish;
I have my tackle and tackle box. You only have to say the word.
Your back, a letter I have been writing for fifteen years, a smooth stone,
a moan someone makes when his hair is pulled, your back
like a warm tongue at rest, a tongue with a tab of acid on top; your spine
is an alphabet, a ladder of celestial proportions.
I am navigating the North and South of it.
Your armpits are beehives, they make me want
to spin wool, want to pour a glass of whiskey, your armpits dripping their honey, their heat, their inexhaustible love-making dark.
I am bright yellow for them.
I am always thinking about them,
resting at your side or high in the air when I’m pulling off your shirt. Your arms of blue and ice with the blood running
to make them believe in God. Your shoulders
make me want to raise an arm and burn down the Capitol. They sing
to each other underneath your turquoise slope-neck blouse.
Each is a separate bowl of rice
steaming and covered in soy sauce. Your neck
is a skyscraper of erotic adult videos, a swan and a ballet
and a throaty elevator
made of light. Your neck
is a scrim of wet silk that guides the dead into the hours of Heaven.
It makes me want to die, your mouth, which is the mouth of everything worth saying. It’s abalone and coral reef. Your mouth,
which opens like the legs of astronauts
who disconnect their safety lines and ride their stars into the billion and one voting districts of the Milky Way.
Darling, you’re my President; I want to get this right!
Matthew Dickman, The New Yorker: Poems | August 29, 2011 Issue
”
”
Matthew Dickman
“
First: Spend at least six hours getting ready. Study yourself in the mirror at home. Is your hairdo media-friendly? Will your outfit read in black and white? Does your “look” inspire at least two clever sound bites?
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous but True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
It’s a theory I have. That people don’t change; sometimes their mask slips off and you see the real person they are.” He tapped on the mug shot. “The monster behind the mask.” Sometimes it’s not the people that change. It’s the mask that falls off. “This is your personal theory?” I asked. He shrugged. “Not exactly. It’s something they say about narcissists. It can also be applied to violent individuals.” Sometimes it’s not the people that change. It’s the mask that falls off. “So
”
”
A.R. Torre (The Last Party)
“
If we’re all going to hell in a handbasket, we might as well make it a party on the way down.
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous but True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
Do you not comprehend this in America, how your unions have been all but destroyed in the last 30 years? Do you not understand why your local US Postal Service offices are cracked, neglected, and almost derelict buildings, with their staffs downsizing and limiting their days of service? The corporately owned US Congress is destroying the postal service as part of its act, playing you for a fool while wearing a two-party (two-headed) monster mask. One sadistic party acts as a wrecking ball hurled at a wall of political inertia that is the second and masochistic party.
”
”
John Hogue (Predictions 2015-2016)
“
Some designers try to apply the wisdom of Solomon by coming up with a solution so terrible the disagreeing parties have no choice but to finally agree. This never works. And they soon find themselves breathing life into Frankenstein’s monster. A designer should never put something in front of you they don’t stand by.
”
”
Mike Monteiro (You're My Favorite Client)
“
hung out with my friends, went to parties, or invited them back to the house where we’d lie around the pool drinking beer, cranking up the music, and working on our suntans.
”
”
Harlow Grace (Monster Stepbrother)
“
Why has this happened? In brief, the state has grown into a cancer – a leveling monster that cannot be restrained. It cannot be restrained because it is the product of our own making. We are the authors of this profligacy; and I fear that in our present state of degeneracy we are more likely to join the party of plunder than rally to fiscal sanity. Who is bold enough to propose austerity at the present time? How many baby boomers, now retiring, would readily forego their Medicare and Social Security in order to save the federal budget? The answer must be a very low number indeed.
”
”
J.R. Nyquist
“
In a letter written to the play's director, Peter Wood, on 30th March 1958, just before the start of rehearsals, Pinter rightly refused to add extra lines explaining or justifying Stanley's motives in withdrawing from the world into a dingy seaside boarding-house: 'Stanley cannot perceive his only valid justification - which is he is what he is - therefore he certainly can never be articulate about it.' But Pinter came much closer than he usually does to offering an explanation of the finished work:
We've agreed: the hierarchy, the
Establishment, the arbiters, the socio-
religious monsters arrive to affect
censure and alteration upon a
member of the club who has discarded
responsibility (that word again) towards
himself and others. (What is your
opinion, by the way, of the act of
suicide?) He does possess, however, for
my money, a certain fibre - he fights for
his life. It doesn't last long, this fight. His
core being a quagmire of delusion, his
mind a tenuous fuse box, he collapses
under the weight of their accusation - an
accusation compounded of the shit-
stained strictures of centuries of
'tradition'.
This gets us right to the heart of the matter. It is not simply a play about a pathetic victim brainwashed into social conformity. It is a play about the need to resist, with the utmost vigour, dead ideas and the inherited weight of the past. And if you examine the text, you notice how Pinter has toughened up the original image of the man in the Eastbourne digs with 'nowhere to go'. Pinter's Stanley Webber - a palpably Jewish name, incidentally - is a man who shores up his precarious sense of self through fantasy, bluff, violence and his own manipulative form of power-play. His treatment of Meg initially is rough, playful, teasing: he's an ersatz, scarpegrace Oedipus to her boardinghouse Jocasta. But once she makes the fateful, mood-changing revelation - 'I've got to get things in for the two gentlemen' - he's as dangerous as a cornered animal. He affects a wanton grandeur with his talk of a European concert tour. He projects his own fear on to Meg by terrorising her with stories of nameless men coming to abduct her in a van. In his first solo encounter with McCann, he tries to win him over by appealing to a shared past (Maidenhead, Fuller's tea shop, Boots library) and a borrowed patriotism ('I know Ireland very well. I've many friends there. I love that country and I admire and trust its people... I think their policemen are wonderful'). At the start of the interrogation he resists Goldberg's injunction to sit down and at the end of it he knees him in the stomach. And in the panic of the party, he attempts to strangle Meg and rape Lulu. These are hardly the actions of a supine victim. Even though Stanley is finally carried off shaven, besuited, white-collared and ostensibly tamed, the spirit of resistance is never finally quelled. When asked how he regards the prospect of being able to 'make or break' in the integrated outer world, he does not stay limply silent, but produces the most terrifying noises.
”
”
Michael Billington (Harold Pinter)
“
Sister didn't have to make a special valentine for Billy Grizzwold. She found the perfect one for him at the card store.
It showed a scary-looking Frankenbear-type monster with a bolt on each side of his neck. It said:
Monsters come in
every shape and size.
But when it comes to creepy,
you take the prize!
She'd sign it, "Guess Who." She couldn't wait to see Billy's face when he opened it at the class Valentine's Day party.
But Sister forgot to watch when Billy opened her valentine because among the valentines she received was one that took her breath away. It was all hearts and flowers and inside it said, “Will you be my special friend?”
“Wow!” said Lizzy Bruin. “It must have cost a whole dollar!”
“It’s signed, ‘Guess who,’” said Sister. “Who do you suppose it’s from?”
“Well, I know who you hope it’s from,” said Lizzy.
“If somebody sent me a beautiful valentine that cost a whole dollar, I’d sure want to know who it was from. There’s Herbie over by the punch bowl. Go ask him.”
Sister started for the punch bowl, but Billy Grizzwold blocked her way. He had the valentine Sister had sent him.
“I’ll be glad to get you some punch,” said Billy.
“And throw it down my back?” said Sister.
“No, nothing like that,” said Billy. “I’m sorry about all the stuff I did. And I really don’t blame you for sending me this. It’s really pretty funny. How’d you like that valentine I sent you?”
“You sent me?” said Sister. “You sent me this valentine?”
“Yep,” said Billy. “I saved up for weeks to get it.”
Sister was confused. She didn’t know what to say, so she just said, “Thanks.
”
”
Stan Berenstain (The Berenstain Bears' Funny Valentine)
“
forever. You’ve lost control, you say to yourself, as the wheel of the world slips from your hands—“It’s happening too fast”—and all you can do is wait for the ride to end, the car to crash, the world to stop. It’s like chasing after time, chasing after the things that have already happened, because the drugs have made you too slow. You’re thick and awkward, but if you can just catch up, then maybe you can grab it, maybe you can grab at time and stop it—
”
”
James St. James (Party Monster: A Fabulous but True Tale of Murder in Clubland)
“
Let’s see what they were fighting over,” Paige said with amusement as she walked over to the third guy and took the vial out of his hand. “What is it?” Tara asked, and she moved over to the brunette to look at the bottle. “Ketamine,” Paige said, and she gave me smirk. “What does that mean?” Tara asked, and she looked over to me. “What is it?” “It’s known on the street as special K,” I said. “Like the cereal?” the platinum blonde asked with a raised brow. “Yeah,” I chuckled. “Like the cereal.” “What does it do?” Tara asked. “It’s an anesthetic of sorts,” Paige explained. “They used it in Vietnam for surgeries.” “Why would somebody want that?” the platinum blonde asked with confusion. “If you boil it, it becomes a white powder,” I said. “You snort the powder, and it makes you hallucinate.” “They call it a K hole,” Paige said, and she shook her head. “Gross,” Tara said. “Also, how do you know that shit? I didn’t take you for a party girl.” “I read about it in Party Monster,” Paige chuckled. “In the 90s people used to use it at clubs.” “It’s like people have never heard of vodka,” Tara said with an eye roll.
”
”
Eric Vall (Without Law 8 (Without Law, #8))
“
It’s a theory I have. That people don’t change; sometimes their mask slips off and you see the real person they are.” He tapped on the mug shot. “The monster behind the mask.” Sometimes it’s not the people that change. It’s the mask that falls off.
”
”
A.R. Torre (The Last Party)
“
So,” Mrs. Lu said as she scooped up a pat of butter with a teasing note in her eyes. “How long have you two been together?” Alex froze mid-bite. Scrrrrp. Theresa’s fork scraped across her plate. “Wait…” Mrs. Lu paused, looking at the two of them carefully. “I was just making a joke…” Silence. “Gross,” Selina said. “They’ve been icky together ever since we got attacked by those monsters at Isolde’s cousin’s party.” Mr. Lu choked on his stew. “Monsters!” “And then they were together the whole time I was staying at Abela’s house. They even took Brutus and left him with Khalik,” the treacherous, evil little sister of Alex Roth continued to talk, unaware of the doom she was creating. “Khalik said they got back home late and then went hunting monsters the next morning.” Alex slowly looked at Theresa for help. His cool, calm girlfriend would surely know what to— The brave huntress had checked out. She’d gone as white as a sheet and was staring at nothing. Oh, by the Traveller, she hadn’t told them! Alex had been wrong. The time for running had not come to an end.
”
”
J.M. Clarke (Mark of the Fool 3 (Mark of the Fool, #3))
“
An Austrian national who was said to be obsessed with Jews, Bishop Hudal moved about Rome throughout the war in a chauffeured car that flew the flag of Greater Germany. Two and a half years after the Allied victory, he hosted a Christmas party attended by hundreds of Nazi war criminals living in Rome under his protection. With Hudal’s help, many would find sanctuary in South America. Adolf Eichmann received assistance from Bishop Hudal, as did Franz Stangl, the commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp. All with the knowledge and tacit support of Pope Pius XII, who believed such monsters to be a valuable asset in the global fight against Soviet communism.
”
”
Daniel Silva (The Order (Gabriel Allon, #20))
“
There was only one Leewood Folcrum. Even if I wasn’t the monster they thought I was.
”
”
A.R. Torre (The Last Party)
“
The British government was so flummoxed by this advanced weapon that they had no words for it. They invented the story that all these explosions were caused by faulty gas mains. But because the agent of these horrific explosions clearly came from the sky, the public sarcastically referred to them as “flying gas pipes.” Only after the Nazis announced that a new weapon of war had been unleashed against the British did Winston Churchill finally admit that England had been attacked by rockets. Suddenly, it appeared as if the future of Europe, and Western civilization itself, might hinge upon the work of a small, isolated band of scientists led by von Braun. HORRORS OF WAR The successes of Germany’s advanced weapons came at a tremendous human cost. More than three thousand V-2 rockets were launched against the Allies, resulting in nine thousand deaths. It is estimated that the death toll was even higher—at least twelve thousand—for the prisoners of war who built the V-2 rockets in slave labor camps. The devil wanted its due. Von Braun realized too late that he was in way over his head. He was horrified when he visited the site where the rockets were built. A friend of von Braun’s quoted him as saying, “It is hellish. My spontaneous reaction was to talk to one of the SS guards, only to be told with unmistakable harshness that I should mind my own business, or find myself in the same striped fatigues!…I realized that any attempt of reasoning on humane grounds would be utterly futile.” Another colleague, when asked if von Braun had ever criticized these death camps, replied, “If he had done it, in my opinion, he would have been shot on the spot.” Von Braun became a pawn of the monster he helped to create. In 1944, when the war effort was in trouble, he got drunk at a party and said that the war was not going well. All he wanted to do was work on rocketry. He regretted that they were working on these weapons of war instead of a spaceship. Unfortunately, there was a spy at the party, and when his drunken comments were relayed to the government, he was arrested by the Gestapo. For two weeks, he was held in a prison cell in Poland, not knowing if he would be shot. Other charges, including rumors that he was a communist sympathizer, were brought to light as Hitler decided his fate. Some officials feared he might defect to England and sabotage the V-2 effort. Eventually, a direct appeal from Albert Speer to Hitler spared von Braun’s life because he was still considered too crucial to the V-2 effort.
”
”
Michio Kaku (The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth)
“
What kind of idiot brought the most beautiful girl to a tawdry, cacophonous party like this and deserted her? If only he knew there were monsters out there, waiting for their turn.
”
”
Christina Lauren (Falling)
“
But perhaps the most lasting autobiographical fake ever to be published in Constellation was "I Was Stalin's Nanny." The putative author, a certain Boudou Zvanidze, was not to be found among our somewhat limited range of corrupt acquaintances who would impersonate the author in return for a small percentage of the fee. Indeed, the fluent Russian-speaking Madame Lecoutre would have seen through such an impersonation, even if the venerable nanny had survived that long ( she would have had to be nearly a hundred years old at the time). Prodigies of eloquence were needed to persuade the Constellation editors that a Russian emigre of our acquaintance, remotely related to the Zvanidze family, had come across certain "family papers"-including a diary kept by Stalin's nanny during his earliest years. Needless to say, Boudou Zvanidze depicted her charge as a monster-smashing his toys, torturing animals, pulling the wings off flies, and providing other early evidence of inhuman behavior. After Stalin's death and the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the USSR, at which Stalin's crimes were posthumously revealed, the article on Boudou Zvanidze assumed considerable importance. One rumor was that Khrushchev himself had ref erred to it in his famous speech attacking Stalin, as an example of Stalin's cruelty, and it has since been included in the endless biographical data concerning Stalin, not only in the West but, I am told, also in the Soviet Union itself.
”
”
Edward Samuel Behr (Anyone here been raped & speaks English?)
“
Smiley’s feelings towards Roy Bland had at that time been ambivalent. Recalling them now, he decided they still were. A don had spotted him, Smiley had recruited him; the combination was oddly akin to the one that had brought Smiley himself into the Circus net. But this time there was no German monster to fan the patriotic flame, and Smiley had always been a little embarrassed by protestations of anti-Communism. Like Smiley, Bland had no real childhood. His father was a docker, a passionate trade-unionist, and a Party member. His mother died when Bland was a boy. His father hated education as he hated authority, and when Bland grew clever the father took it into his head that he had lost his son to the ruling class and beat the life out of him. Bland fought his way to grammar school and in the holidays worked his fingers, as Toby would say, to the bones, in order to raise the extra fee. When Smiley met him in his tutor’s rooms at Oxford, he had the battered look of someone just arrived from a bad journey.
”
”
John le Carré (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (The Karla Trilogy, #1))
“
Also in this book we notice that Nancy has developed a love of grandeur, to see social life not just as entertainment but as display. This taste is best expressed later in her histories, especially The Sun King, but it already appears in Love in a Cold Climate. Lady Montdore is a monster, but because she is grand and gives splendid parties the reader is meant on balance to admire her:
”
”
Jonathan Guinness (The House of Mitford)
“
In reality, not a single Western politician or party, not a single government anywhere in the world, can be expected to change when constantly rewarded this way. The argument in favor of voting for the lesser evil is frequently made in good faith, by people who have plenty to lose should the greater evil win. But it also establishes the lowest of benchmarks: Want my vote? Be less monstrous than the monsters.
”
”
Omar El Akkad (One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This)
“
Everyone has slipped behind their alter ego, becoming someone different or perhaps closer to who they truly are.
”
”
Eddy Boudel Tan (The Tiger and the Cosmonaut)
“
Thù hận sẽ nảy sinh khi con người tập hợp lại một chỗ. Cháu chỉ đổ thêm chút dầu vào đó mà thôi.”
“Hatred emerges the moment people come together. I simply gave it something to burn on.
”
”
Naoki Urasawa (Naoki Urasawa's Monster, Volume 2: Surprise Party (Naoki Urasawa's Monster, #2))