Kristopher Jansma Quotes & Sayings

Makes you want to fold stories inside of stories inside of stories. — Kristopher Jansma

If the gods actually know our fates and still try to meddle and wage their wars in us, then there must be some purpose in our choosing one of the many paths to that end. Man must have free will, or else why would the gods themselves bother? — Kristopher Jansma

Everything I write is for her; none of it is ever good enough. — Kristopher Jansma

The idea of it's great," I explain. "But then there's the actual thing of it. — Kristopher Jansma

Each time it goes around a little bit, a second goes away."
"Where?" I asked, as the pendulum swung again. And again.
He winked at me. "It escapes. That's why they call it that. Escapement. — Kristopher Jansma

We'd been bankrupt since we'd left home; we'd secure our own society. Retirement was an afterlife we didn't believe in and that we expected yesterday. — Kristopher Jansma

The truth is only slightly less interesting than the story. — Kristopher Jansma

These stories are all true, but only somewhere else. — Kristopher Jansma

After I charge their brains with my own brand of skeptical electricity, I unleash them - the New Cynics - upon a world that is slowly and happily critiquing itself to death. — Kristopher Jansma

Everybody's just got their nose in their own soup. They say they care, but they don't put poems in books for me to read ... They talk to me about 'adjusting my expectations for the world.' And how I need to be realistic and just accept that this is how things work and that life is unfair ... I know, I know, I know. — Kristopher Jansma

the world." Jeffrey just shakes his head. "You don't know what it was like. You weren't there when things got really bad. That Haslett asshole kept on calling, and then Iowa, and whenever I went out, there'd be someone just staring at me. It was like I could see my words there in their heads. Crawling there on the undersides of their foreheads. It was like they thought I knew something. And they always ask me, Is it true? Is it true? Did it really happen? And then . . . What's next? What are you working on now? All of these . . . these . . . these - "" (from "The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards: A Novel (Ala Notable Books for Adults)" by Kristopher Jansma) — Kristopher Jansma

And for this imperfect immortality, what prices have been paid? How many livers, lungs, and veins? Shredded, polluted, shot? How many children deserted, family secrets betrayed, sordid trysts laid out for strangers to see? How many wives and husbands shoved to the side? How many ovens scorched with our hair? Gun barrels slid between our lips? Bathtubs slowly reddened by our blood and twisting drowned that drowned us? How many flawed pages burned in disgust and reduced to ashes? How many flawless moments observed from just a slight distance so that, later, we might reduce them to words? All with an unspoken prayer that these hard-won truths might outlast the brief years of our lives. — Kristopher Jansma

She's just this character to you. Both of us are! And we always have been. You don't know what goes on in our heads. You don't know where we come from or who we are . . . Can you even tell the difference anymore between what you've written about her and who she really, truly is? — Kristopher Jansma

It was like exactly what it was. It was like a set of claws tearing through my flesh. — Kristopher Jansma

Does it sting like this because I've been robbed or because it was never mine to steal? ... Maybe an idea, like love, cannot ever be stolen away, just as it cannot ever have belonged to me and only me. — Kristopher Jansma

It's all about realizing what you're doing to hold yourself back, like through hatred or fear or nihilism or eating gluten. You identify the things you want, and you finally allow yourself to take them-'

William lost the end of her diatribe as a garbage truck rolled by outside — Kristopher Jansma

He extends a hand, larger than a dinner plate, and I have no choice but to shake it. I think I can feel my metacarpals shattering. Julian jumps to summon our waitress again, mostly to avoid shaking hands with this Goliath. "And a pitcher of mimosas, as soon as humanly possible. — Kristopher Jansma

The best thing to do - usually - was to let him play these things out. Who was I to tell a genius it was time to put his clothes back on? — Kristopher Jansma

Because no one was special, and no one was immune to tragedy. — Kristopher Jansma

It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch. A fearful thing to love, hope, dream: to be - to be, And oh! to lose. A thing for fools, this, and a holy thing, a holy thing to love. — Kristopher Jansma

Evelyn was followed in by a sour-faced woman with long, glamorous dark hair and a stern-looking gentleman in a tuxedo who looked just like Julian, but with less hair. They both looked as though they might buy the auditorium just to burn it to the ground. Even in this crowd they seemed assuredly a cut above the rest. — Kristopher Jansma

We began to build our castles in the air, hoping sooner or later they'd carry us off. New days came like clockwork without becoming tomorrows. We slept less and less, dipped in darkness through the daytime and heated by burning light in the endless evening. And only when we finally got up, threw on our clothes and walked away, did we realize that we had all been gone for years already. — Kristopher Jansma