Quotes by Brock Clarke

Because this is another thing your average American man in crisis does: he tries to go home, forgetting, momentarily, that he is the reason he left home in the first place, that the home is not his anymore, and that the crisis is him.

After a dream like that, youre grateful that it was just a dream, that no matter how bad your actual life, it couldnt be worse than your dream life.

When I was a boy, I would read those postcards and know exactly why my father was doing what he was doing: he was taking a stab at greatness, that is, if greatness is simply another word for doing something different from what you were already doing--or maybe greatness is the thing we want to have so that other people will want to have us, or maybe greatness is merely the grail for our unhappy, striving selves, the thing we think we need but dont and cant get anyway.

Oh no, I said, because if our life is just one endless song about hope and regret, then oh no is apparently that songs chorus, the words we always return to.

I have no idea, he said, and thats another thing Ill put in my arsonists guide: be wary of a man who says, I have no idea, when asked why his wife doesnt like something hes done, which of course is just another way of saying be wary of men in general.

You know what else he said? Anne Marie asked.Tell me, I said. I didnt want to know, of course, but she was going to tell me anyway, so why not invite in the inevitable, which is why, in the movies, vampires have to be asked inside by their victims and always are.

This helping-people business was an attractive idea, Ill admit, because up to now Id not done much more than be, and when I wasnt just being, Id caused some pain, too.

How did he get so terribly smart, so determined? Maybe it was the pain Id caused that made him that way, and if that were true, then Id sort of had a hand in it, in making him as smart and devious as he was. I was really starting to dislike the guy. But I also felt a little proud, like Dr. Frankenstein must have felt when his monster turned on him, because after all, it was Dr. Frankenstein who had made the monster strong and cunning enough to turn on him.