Alex Shakar Quotes & Sayings

Childhood and adulthood were not factors of age but states of mind. — Alex Shakar

Children, awkward, isolate, their bodies crammed to bursting with caffein and sugar and pop music and cologne and perfume and hairgel and pimple cream and growth hormone-treated hamburger meat and premature sex drives and costly, fleeting, violent sublimations. It's all part of the conspiracy ... all of it trying to convince them that they're here to be trained for lives of adventure and glamor and heroism, when in fact they're here only to be trained for more of the same, for lives of plunking in the quarters, paying a premium for the never-ending series of shabby fantasies to come, the whole lifelong laser light show of glamorous degradation and habitual novelty and fun-loving murder and global isolation. — Alex Shakar

That's the problem with relationships," George was saying. "It's a contract. You agree to be some unchanging caricature of yourself. To act the same way all the time. Never to change. It's counter-evolutionary. How can anything new and good come into your life, if you're holding on to something that doesn't exist anymore? — Alex Shakar

The only spot of comfort was the lingering impression of her fingertips through the fabric of his shirt, a reminder of the good side of having skin. He cultivated that square-inch patch, tilled and tended it into a full-body embrace. — Alex Shakar

An ironic religion
one that never claims to be absolutely true but only professes to be relatively beautiful, and never promises salvation but only proposes it as a salubrious idea. A century ago there were people who thought art was the thing that could fuse the terms of this seemingly insuperable oxymoron, and no doubt art is part of the formula. But maybe consumerism also has something to teach us about forging an ironic religion
a lesson about learning to choose, about learning the power and consequences, for good or ill, of our ever-expanding palette of choices. Perhaps ... the day will come when the true ironic religion is found, the day when humanity is filled with enough love and imagination and responsibility to become its own god and make a paradise of its world, a paradise of all the right choices. — Alex Shakar

Nothing lasts forever. But - especially as it seems to me cities and humans are symbiotically and inextricably bound at this point - I hope cities have a good, long run. Plus, cities are beautiful creatures in their own right; and as with us, their vulnerability and ephemerality are part of that beauty. — Alex Shakar

Fred put away the phone, finished off his bourbon, and resumed watching the couple suck on the combined mass of their two tongues. He wasn't as drunk as them. Or as young. Or as stupid. He envied them on every score. — Alex Shakar

With the Internet, we can choose the very communities we want to be a part of. — Alex Shakar

Cats are there to be indulged. That's their function: to receive the love we never fully gave our parents. Not like dogs. Dogs are there to give us the love and devotion our children will never fully give us. — Alex Shakar

From the beauty they deserve will come the love they deserve. And from the love will follow truth. — Alex Shakar

You need contradictions to make an ideal. — Alex Shakar

He dozed off, into a dreamless oblivion, for what seemed like seconds but was in fact hours, and awoke hungover, the inner surface of his skull pulsing like a single, giant nerve being chewed by some ruminant animal. — Alex Shakar

Beauty is the PR campaign of the soul. — Alex Shakar

How easy it is for men to talk about beauty, and how subtly intimidating when they do. — Alex Shakar

On a cement pediment stands the inevitable bronze statue of a man in a cheap suit. — Alex Shakar

She avoids deep thought like an empty restaurant, not out of stupidity, but a canny resolve to be happy. — Alex Shakar