I finished Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Man is that a weird book. But some fabulous passages:
I told myself that everyone – at least everyone fascinating – had a few scars.
He was always getting something off the ground, his act together, his hands dirty, the show on the road, someone’s goat, the message, out more, on with things, lost, laid, away with murder. He was also always taking charge, the bull by the horns, back the night, something in stride, someone to the cleaners, a rain check, an ax to something, Manhattan.
Always have everything you say exquisitely annotated, and, where possible, provide staggering Visual Aids.
“Very few people realize, there’s no point in chasing after answers to life’s important questions,” Dad said once in a Bourbon Mood. “They all have fickle, highly whimsical minds of their own. Nevertheless. If you’re patient, if you don’t rush them, when they’re ready, they’ll smash into you. And don’t be surprised if afterwards you’re speechless and there are cartoon tweety birds chirping around your head.”
In the end, a man turns into what he thinks he is, however large or small. It is the reason why certain people are prone to colds and catastrophe. And why others can dance on water.
I was without a plan, plum out of ideas, at a loss. Even within fifteen minutes of running away from home, unmooring oneself from one’s parent, one was struck by the vastness of things, the typhoon ferocity of the world, the frailty of one’s boat.
We are under an invincible blindness as to the true and real nature of things.
