Michael Zadoorian Quotes & Sayings

It doesn't upset me to think about dying. What upsets me is the idea of John being alone after his spell passes. The idea of one of us without the other. (p.127) — Michael Zadoorian

I think about what the man at the Coney joint said. He was right. We are the people who stay. We stay in our homes and pay them off. We stay at our jobs. We do our thirty and come home to stay even more. We stay until we are no longer able to mow our lawns and our gutters sag with saplings, until our houses look haunted to the neighborhood children. We like it where we are. I guess then the other question is: Why do we even travel? There can only be one answer to that: we travel to appreciate home. (p.97) — Michael Zadoorian

Why does the world have to destroy anything that doesn't fit in? We still can't figure out that this is the most important reason to love something. — Michael Zadoorian

Anyone who never met a man he didn't like just isn't trying hard enough. — Michael Zadoorian

I haven't been out driving at this time of night in many years, much less in an unfamiliar area. These are the things that scare you as you get older. You understand night all too well, all its attendant meanings. You try to avoid it, work around it, keep it from entering your house. Your weary, ornery body tells you to stay up late, sleep less, keep the lights on, don't go into the bedroom - if you have to sleep, sleep in your chair, at the table. Everything is about avoiding the night. Because of that, I suppose that I should be scared out here in the dark, but I am finally past that, I think.
(p.204) — Michael Zadoorian

You worry about your parents, siblings, spouses dying, yet no one prepares you for your friends dying. Every time you flip through your address book, you are reminded of it---she's gone, he's gone, they're both gone. Names and numbers and addresses scratched out. Page after page of gone, gone, gone. The sense of loss that you feel isn't just for the person. It is the death of your youth, the death of fun, of warm conversations and too many drinks, of long weekends, of shared pains and victories and jealousies, of secrets that you couldn't tell anyone else, of memories that only you two shared. — Michael Zadoorian

Know this: even if you're like us and still doddering around above ground, someone out there from your past is probably pretty sure that you're dead by now. (p.125 ) — Michael Zadoorian

This is exactly the sort of thing that makes traveling wonderful for me, the reason I defied everyone. The two of us together like we have always been, not saying anything, not doing anything special, just on vacation. I know nothing lasts, but even when you know that things are just about over, sometimes you can run back and take a little bit more and no one will notice. — Michael Zadoorian

The sad truth is, John and I and the kids only took Route 66 once on our trips to Disneyland. Our family, like the rest of America, succumbed to the lure of faster highways, more direct routes, higher speed limits. We forgot about taking the slow way. It makes you wonder if something inside us knows that our lives are going to pass faster than we could ever realize. So we run around like chickens about to lose our heads. Which makes our little two- or three-week vacations with our families more important than ever...
As for the time that elapsed between those vacations, that's another thing altogether. It seems to have all passed breathlessly, like some extended whisper of days, months, years, decades. (pp.39-40) — Michael Zadoorian

You spend your life so worried about what others think, when in reality, people mostly don't think. On the few occasions when they do, true, it is often something bad, but one has to at least admire the fact that they're thinking at all. — Michael Zadoorian

I thought that nothing enormously bad or good had happened to me during my life. All the normal things had occurred. I had lived a completely unremarkable life. I wanted only my home, and the love and safety of those around me, nothing else. I knew there was no particular reason why I was put on this earth, but here I was and I was glad to be here, awed by the beauty of it. It was a perfect moment. (p.99) — Michael Zadoorian

After a while, just staying alive becomes a full-time job. No wonder we need a vacation. — Michael Zadoorian

Just then, a little hopped-up Japanese car zips up next to us. It's bright yellow with loud, high-pitched exhaust pipes and a big air spoiler on the back. I look over at the driver to see who's making all the racket. I'm surprised to see a teenage girl there. After a moment, she gooses it and whinnies on past. On her back window, there's a sticker: NO FEAR.
I think, good girl. — Michael Zadoorian

But what I do love about this road is how the gaudy becomes grand, how tastelessness is a way of everyday life — Michael Zadoorian

Hi lover," he says to me, completely forgetting what happened before.
He knows who I am. He knows that I am the one person who he loves, has always loved. No disease, no person can take that away.
(p.205) — Michael Zadoorian

The memories we take to the ends of our lives have no real rhyme or reason, especially when you think of the endless things that you do over the course of a day, a week , a month, a year, a lifetime. All the cups of coffee, hand-washings, changes of clothes, lunches, goings to the bathroom, headaches, naps, walks to school, trips to the grocery store, conversations about the weather ---all the things so unimportant that they should be immediately forgotten. Yet they aren't — Michael Zadoorian

We pass a church with a massive blue neon cross, and I am spiritually lifted by feelings of great religiosity. No, I'm not, for crying out loud. Don't be ridiculous. But what I do love about this road is how the gaudy becomes grand, how tastelessness is a way of everyday life. You have to admire how these people shamelessly try to get your attention as you drive by, whether they're trying to feed you a hamburger or a savior. (p.37) — Michael Zadoorian