Ron Koertge Quotes & Sayings

Margaux looks around the table; this is not working. All of a sudden she's thinking about a safe room, something she's only heard of but suddenly wants: water, oxygen, bulletproof door, dead bolts, a thousand books. Utterly quiet. Completely silent. No girls she barely knows in saggy leather pants, no girls in mesh strippers' gloves and jeans sanded thin as a bee's wing, and no girls who can't stay home one night a year because they are always and forever out. On their way to. Coming from.
And then her heart open. Just a little, but it does. Because she remembers all that. How she felt then: the self-reproach, the utter confusion ... That's why her heart opens. For those girls at the table who always feel baffled and sad, tender and malign, repulsive and desirable, innocent and contemptuous of innocence.
So she cries. For them, mostly. For herself a little ... everything hesitates. So that for a second there's no sound in the enormous room but that of Margaux sobbing. — Ron Koertge

You've got scars, you're beat up, you're a different person, but you're through it. — Ron Koertge

OMG. He's a gift shop, a lamb kebab with mint,/a solar panel poetry machine with biceps. He's the path/through the dark woods, the light on the page, a postcard/from the castle and a one-way ticket there. He's the most/astounding arrangement of molecules ever!/Just look at those tights! An honest-to-God prince at last. — Ron Koertge

That's why babies cry so much. All of a sudden having a body is a lot to deal with. — Ron Koertge

Statements make sense for somebody who needs advice. I'm not giving advice. I don't instruct. At my best, I delight. That's my job. — Ron Koertge

Walker grinned.
'Ah,' said Jesus. 'There it is. Signs of your holiness.'
'I just smiled. You made a dumb joke, and I smiled.'
'And that isn't holy? — Ron Koertge

I always sit through the credits. I am always the last one out of any theater. I even make a point of being last. I stay in my seat until everyone else has shuffled past. Then I turn my back, too, on the comforting dark. — Ron Koertge

I'm not a big fan of inspiration. I'm too old to sit and wait for the muse to give me a little kiss ... I write a lot, and I'm not afraid to make mistakes or to write badly. I can alsways fix something weak and dull. But I can't fix a blank page. — Ron Koertge

Dark night of the soul," said Jesus, "Happens to everybody sooner or later. — Ron Koertge

Kids don't think about their folks nearly as much as everybody imagines. Parents are just there, like background music at the mall. — Ron Koertge

With his iPod all the way up, nothing in this
world can touch him. Just over his pulse
is a fresh tattoo- a dotted line and the words
Cut Here
Grief is a street he skates down. "Hey,
donkey's ass!" He bides his time, sanding
away his fingerprints, wondering how he
could get his assailants in one room. — Ron Koertge

Since I don't know where I'm going, I guess I'm in no real hurry to get there. — Ron Koertge

If every kid who said he was going to the library, when he was really off doing something else, actually went to the library, they'd have to send out for more books. — Ron Koertge

No wonder I want to be Robert Mitchum: big, strong, super-cool, with those Freon eyes of his. That's who I was pretending to be a minute ago - Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past. - Ben — Ron Koertge

You're a miracle, Walker. Your fingers are. Your toes are. Your crushing sadness and guilt are. — Ron Koertge

She knows her life is on the line but, believe it
or not, she's never been so excited!
Her husband's a serial killer, and her bodice is wet
with tears, but there's a chance her brothers
will show up like winning lottery numbers.
Which does she want more - her hair wound
in the maniac's hands and her white white throat bared,
or the sound of boots on marble stairs? — Ron Koertge

Little kids I don't mind. Every kid wants a pony. It's grown-ups that get my robe in a knot. Stop with the begging, okay? Adore me for a change. Or give thanks. I like gratitude. Or ask for guidance. But oh, no. It's always the pony. — Ron Koertge

All over town kids lay awake & wondered: Am I smart enough, pretty enough, strong enough, tall enough? If our fears were smoke, the town would be covered night & day by an inky pall. — Ron Koertge

The guys can't take their eyes off Colleen ... one of them ... probably sees her just like I do, she's the gatekeeper to another world. — Ron Koertge