The Burbs Quotes & Sayings

I think one of the keys to happiness is accepting that I am never going to be perfectly happy. Life is uncomfortable. So I might as well get busy loving the people around me. I'm going to stop trying so hard to decide whether they are the "right people" for me and just take deep breaths and love my neighbors. I'm going to take care of my friends. I'm going to find peace in the 'burbs. I'm going to quit chasing happiness long enough to notice it smiling right at me. — Glennon Doyle Melton

And what we've been always been is ... ?"
"Is living on borrowed time. Never caring about who's paying for it, who's starving somewhere else all jammed together so we can have cheap food, a house, a yard in the burbs ... planetwide, more every day, the payback keeps gathering. And meantime the only help we get from the media is boo hoo the innocent dead. Boo fuckin hoo. You know what? All the dead are innocent. There's no uninnocent dead."
After a while, "You're not going to explain that, or ... "
"Course not, it's a koan. — Thomas Pynchon

And what is shamanism but philosophy with a hands-on attitude. Philosophy not made around the camp fire, but philosophy based on the acquisition of extreme experience. That's how you figure out what the world is, not by bicycling around in the burbs, but by forcing extreme experience. — Terence McKenna

There are times I wish I was more conventional. I would get a husband and a baby and a big SUV in the 'burbs and be happy. But forging my own way - my career, my relationships with wonderful but troubled people - that's who I am. — Lauren Oliver

Further interrogation revealed that the Pires were a gang of Goths who only came out at night and liked to wear fake fangs and drink each other's blood. I could relate; there wasn't much good on TV anymore, and kids can get bored in the 'burbs. — Jeff Strand

Do you remember that piece of footage on the local news, just as the first tower comes down, woman runs in off the street into a store, just gets the door closed behind her, and here comes this terrible black billowing, ash, debris, sweeping through the streets, gale force past the window ... that was the moment, Maxi. Not when 'everything changed.' When everything was revealed. No grand Zen illumination, but a rush of blackness and death. Showing us exactly what we've become, what we've been all the time."
"And what we've always been is ... ?"
"Is living on borrowed time. Getting away cheap. Never caring about who's paying for it, who's starving somewhere else all jammed together so we can have cheap food, a house, a yard in the burbs ... planetwide, more every day, the payback keeps gathering. And meantime the only help we get from the media is boo hoo the innocent dead. Boo fuckin hoo. You know what? All the dead are innocent. There's no uninnocent dead. — Thomas Pynchon

Just for a while": Death's opening chat-up line in His great seduction, before he drugged you with soporific comforts, distracted you with minor luxuries and ensnared you with long-term payment plans.
Join the Rat Race "just for a while."
Concentrate on your career "just for a while."
Move in with your girlfriend "just for a while."
Find a bigger place, out in the burbs "just for a while."
Lie down in that wooden box "just for a while. — Christopher Brookmyre

Maybe it wasn't rational, but she didn't like the idea of Leo invading her little world. Yesterday, Brooklyn had belonged to her. The Long Island 'burbs where she'd grown up had felt far away from the brick streets and renovated factory spaces of Brooklyn. In this job, she'd felt truly independent, putting down her own fragile roots in a new place.

Fast forward twenty-four hours, and her daddy had joined the workplace and her ex-boyfriend had shown up to remind her of all that she'd lost. Really, a girl could be forgiven for feeling slightly hysterical.

Not that there was any time to panic. — Sarina Bowen

Nobody should have to put their boxers in a half rotted chest of drawers."
"Hey. I'll have you know that the rustic look is very popular in the burbs."
"Rustic?" Chase snorted. "Is that your way of saying termite infested?"
"This furniture does not have termites. Mice maybe, even moths, but not termites."
"Great, I can look forward to having a swiss cheese wardrobe. — Adrienne Wilder

Next morning, Letty cabbed out to an IHOP in the xeriscaped burbs, several miles west of the glitz of the Strip. The emotion of the previous night still clung. — Blake Crouch