Dress Your Family In Corduroy And Denim

Quotes

1. If finding an apartment is like falling in love, buying one is like proposing on your first date and agreeing not to see each other until the wedding.

   p. 183

2. 

   I can't seem to fathom that the things important to me are not important to other people as well, and so I come off sounding like a missionary, someone whose job it is to convert rather than listen.

   p. 203

3. 

   Talk like this [i.e. by companions at a diner] can go on for hours, and while you do have to accept it, you don't have to actually pay attention. I stared straight ahead, watching a broken-nosed cook top a hamburger with cheese, and then I turned slightly to my left and began listening to the two men seated on the other side of me. There was about them the weariness of people who could not afford to retire and would keep on toiling, horselike, until they dropped. The man beside me wore a T-shirt endorsing the state of Florida, and as if the weather were completely different on the other side of the ketchup bottle, the man beside him wore a thick wool sweater and heavy corduroy pants. "Did you read about those worms?" he asked.

   He was referring to the can of nematodes—tiny worms—recently discovered on the Texas plains. They'd been sent up with the doomed space shuttle and had somehow managed to survive the explosion.

   While I'd been listening to my neighbors, Anne had ordered me a slice of pie, and as I picked up my fork she told me that I was supposed to eat it backward, starting with the outer crust and working my way inward. "Your last bite should be the point, and you're supposed to make a wish on it," she said. "Hasn't anyone ever told you that?"

   As Anne and Hugh resumed their conversation, I thought of all the pie I had eaten during the course of my life, and wondered how different things might be if only I had wished upon the points.

   p. 207

4. 

   I thought I'd get a coffee and take it outdoors, but just as I approached, a boy swooped in and began mixing himself a cup of hot chocolate.

   It was a complicated business, mixing a cup of hot chocolate. You had to spread the powdered cocoa from one end of the table to the other and use as many stirrers as possible, making sure to thoroughly chew the wetted ends before tossing them upon the stack of unused napkins. This is what I like about children: complete attention to one detail and complete disregard of another.

   p. 215

5. 

   He took a sip of my father's weak coffee and spit it back into the mug. "This shit's like making love in a canoe."

   "Excuse me?"

   "It's fucking near water."

   p. 171

6. 

   My problem was that I already loved an apartment. The one we had was perfect, and searching for another left me feeling faithless and sneaky, as if I were committing adultery. After a viewing, I'd stand in our living room, looking up at the high, beamed ceiling and trying to explain that the other two-bedroom had meant nothing to me.

   p. 180

7. 

   Sometimes when you're stoned it's fun to sit around and think of who might play you in the movie version of your life. What makes it fun is that no one is actually going to make a movie of your life.

   I'd worried that, in making the movie, the director might get me and my family wrong, but now a worse thought occurred to me: What if he got us right?

   p. 147

8. 

   I never went into their apartment, but what I saw from the door was pretty rough - not simply messy or chaotic, but hopeless, the lair of a depressed person.

   p. 108

9. 

   My sister Lisa had an apartment over by the university and said that I could come stay with her as long as I didn't bring my Joni Mitchell record. My mother offered to drive me over, and after a few bong hits I took her up on it. It was a fifteen-minute trip across town, and on the way we listened to the rebroadcast of a radio call-in show in which people phoned the host to describe the various birds gathered around their backyard feeders. Normally the show came on in the morning, and it seemed strange to listen to it at night. The birds in question had gone to bed hours ago and probably had no idea they were still being talked about.

   p. 88

10. 

    "Cut corners and it'll always come back to bite you in the ass." That was one of her sayings.

    p. 106

11. 

    Her face was like the weather in one of those places with no discernible seasons.

    p. 107

12. 

    It was insulting to be told not to take too much of something you didn't really want in the first place.

    p. 7

13. 

    She's afraid to tell me anything important, knowing I'll only turn around and write about it. In my mind, I'm like a friendly junkman, building things from the little pieces of scrap I find here and there, but my family's started to see things differently. Their personal lives are the so-called pieces of scrap I so casually pick up, and they're sick of it. More and more often their stories begin with the line "You have to swear you will never repeat this." I always promise, but it's generally understood that my word means nothing.

    p. 147

14. 

    "It wouldn't have made any difference," my mother said. "A woman like that, the way she sees it she's a victim. Everyone against her, no matter what."

    p. 119

15. 

    In the coming years our father would continue to promise what he couldn't deliver, and in time we grew to think of him as an actor auditioning for the role of a benevolent millionaire. He'd never get the part but liked the way the words felt in his mouth.

    p. 28

16. 

    What really interests me are the local gun laws. Can I carry a concealed weapon and, if so, under what circumstances? What's the waiting period for a tommy gun? Could I buy a Glock 17 if I were recently divorced or fired from my job?

    p. 157

17. 

    My mother and I were at the dry cleaner's, standing behind a woman we had never seen.

    "My sister and I are visiting from out of town," the woman said, a little louder now, and again the man nodded. "I'd love to stay awhile longer and explore, but my home—well, one of my homes—is on the garden tour, so I've got to get back to Williamsburg."

    "My home—well, one of my homes": by the end of the day my mother and I had repeated this line no less than fifty times. You had to get it just right, or else the sentence lost its power.

    The first dozen times we tried it, our voices sounded pinched and snobbish, but by midafternoon they had softened.

    "My home—well, one of my homes . . ." My mother said it in a rush, as if she were under pressure to be more specific.

    p. 17

That’s all the quotes.

17 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more