constructive deconstruction

In Nashville after 5 months out. dude. lydia's huge, and it's all so trippy. so normal, and yet so weird all at once. of course this is the first night. the whole, this morning i had one life and tonight i have another. finished Lullaby today. some notable quotes:

"There's so much we need to get fixed. To get back to God, as Mona would say. Just to break even."

"And maybe you don't go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don't do"

"No matter how much you love someone, you still want to have our own way."

"With her pink fingertips, she scatters the words back over her shoulder."

"Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can hurt like hell. ... Here's Big Brother, singing and dancing, force-feeding you so your mind never gets hungry enough to think."

"No matter how you put it together, you 're never sure if it's right."

"The glue smells like hairspray. The smell tastes like oranges and gasoline."

"This is about Helen Hoover Boyle. Her haunting me. The way a song stays in your head. The way you think life should be. How anything holds your attention. How your past goes with you into every day of your future. That is. This is. It's all of it, Helen Hoover Boyle. We're all of us haunted and haunting."

"It's nothing perfect of complete, but this is what I've made of my life. Right or wrong, it follows no master plan. All you can do is hope for a pattern to emerge, and sometimes it never does. Still with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that."

"A world where people are afraid to listen, afraid they'll hear something behind the din of traffic. Some toxic words buried in the loud music playing next door. Imaging a higher and higher resistance to language. No one talks because no one dares to listen. The deaf shall inherit the earth."

"The sound shivers through the walls, through the table, through the window frame, and into my finger. These distraction-oholics. These focus-ophobics. Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother's busy holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed. he's making sure your imagination withers. Until it's as useful as your appendix. he's making sure your attention is always filled."

"There are worse things you can do to the people you love than kill them. The regular way is just to watch the world do it.... The music and laughter eat away at your thoughts. The noise blots them out. All the sound distracts. Your head aches from the glue. Anymore, no one's mind is their own. You can't concentrate. You can't think. There's always some noise worming in. Singers shouting. Dead people laughing. Actors crying. All these little doses of emotion."