An old girlfriend is a gun in your belly. It's no longer loaded, so when you see her, all you feel is the hollow mechanical click in your gut, and possibly the ghost of an echo, sense memory from when it used to carry live rounds. Occasionally, though, there's a bullet you missed, lying dormant in its overlooked chamber, and when that trigger gets pulled, the unexpected gunshot is deafening even as the forgotten bullet rips its way through the tissue and muscle of your midsection and out into the light of day. Seeing Carly is like that. Even though we haven't spoken in almost ten years, it's an explosion, and in that one instant every memory, every feeling, comes flooding back as fresh as if it were yesterday.
Jonathan Tropper
Related I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES Here is one fact 1 minute to finish the class, 1 day to die, one day behind that fact, one day in th... DEYTH BANGER The battle is not physical, it is spiritual and your mind is the battleground. Keep your mind pure a... JEANETTE CORON Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over. RICHARD CARLSON When a child comes in, I believe that it's a 'multipersonhood,' and it knows it, its con... SHIRLEY MACLAINE Were you there?” She shook her head. “No. I was here in Nain having a child.” �... FRANCINE RIVERS Love is the best thing there ever is. There’s no words to describe it. You wouldn’t be able to f... UZAIR ALAM [Memory]... is a system of near-infinite complexity, a system that seems designed for revision as mu... JOHN DANIEL Now is the only time we have, and the only time we have any control over. RICHARD CARLSON But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime af... STEPHEN KING Use your heart. Understand. Learn to see things in the now, not as they were or will be, or as ... E.J. PATTEN Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you... C. JOYBELL C. There is only one true aristocracy . . . and that is the aristocracy of passionate souls! TENNESSEE WILLIAMS But God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love. Your place in heav... C.S. LEWIS It was frustrating to still be in the dark about something and be given only so little light. LAUREN LOLA Being present is being connected to All Things. S. KELLEY HARRELL, M. DIV. The things i know now, i never knew then. I wish i knew. SOTONYE ANGA Your life is like a car which moves sometimes with jerks caused by the dirt in its gas as if it has ... OSHO You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what ma... LUIS BUNUEL You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what ma... LUIS BUñUEL There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of ... ANNE RICE The universe is so vast, so immense, we can never expect to explore it all. It is in effect, not so ... CHRISTINA ENGELA Time is so important.'so spend time doing something that you love.' make the most of it and Let the ... NAPZ CHERUB PELLAZO When anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness and self-worth, it is essentiall... TIMOTHY J. KELLER When you love someone as much as that, you don't believe they can die. You think your love protects ... IRèNE NéMIROVSKY A song is only as strong as its foundation, and when it comes so naturally in any setting, those are... COREY TAYLOR You just sit there and tolerate it, the same way everything in this country is tolerated. Every dece... IMRE KERTéSZ When the great white silence comes and fills the boughs of the trees with a thickening, glistening b... J. Z. KNIGHT Wake up to a brand new day and realize why you woke up to meet the day! Live to the end of another d... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Unhappy memories are persistent. They're specific, and it's the details that refuse to leave us alon... CAMERON DOKEY [Tapers, as I've said, I love you. Your cause is righteous. There is nothing wrong with offering aud... JOHN PERRY BARLOW Embrace YOU...Believe in yourself, in this very moment...forgive yourself for all mistakes and 'bad'... ANGIE KARAN Laugh, even when you feel too sick or too worn out or tired. Smile, even when you're trying no... ALYSHA SPEER My method of getting a play across the footlights is like a revolver shooting: every line has a bull... GEORGE BERNARD SHAW Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no ... C.S. LEWIS As well expect Nature to answer to your human values as to come into your house and sit in a chair. ... HENRY BESTON You can not die of grief, though it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though som... LAURELL K. HAMILTON Solum invoked a sensation akin to lingering déjà vu in the wake of a dream. It was not ... G.S. JENNSEN May its not portion to meet any one in your life but if you feel sudden pangs of sorrow in daily dre... PALITHA ARIYARATHNA Believe me there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory....everything is fo... ALBERT CAMUS It is an ultra neo-conservative county, and when you wear and carry that banner you try to flex your... LONNIE RANDOLPH He [Bilbo] used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs we... J.R.R. TOLKIEN Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life,the idea came to him o... JOSEPH CAMPBELL I feel like you become a songwriter when you claim that it's sort of like a switch flipped, and ... CHARLIE WORSHAM I have always wished the present to resemble memory: because the present can be flat at times, and b... LYDIA MILLET Part of me feels like when you had a lot of success in your teens and 20s, it gets harder for you in... WINONA RYDER You are out of the world’s chatter, its corridor echoes, its muttering. Walking: it hits you at fi... FRéDéRIC GROS Love is happiness, but only when you believe it will last forever. Even though every time it turns o... SERGEI LUKYANENKO It takes courage to be the author of your life. When you are struggling through one of the difficult... NICHOLAS LORE You can't stop loving or wanting to love because when its right, it's the best thing in the world. W... KEITH SWEAT You can't remember sex. You can remember the fact of it, and recall the setting, and even the detail... E. L. DOCTOROW I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. ... What you know about computin... ALAN J. PERLIS If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tender... ST. FRANCIS DE SALES If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tender... ST. FRANCIS DE SALES All you can ever achieve is a sense of your soul. You gain little glimpses of its light, colors, and... JOHN O'DONOHUE You can't metabolize the loss. It is in the cells of your face, your chest, behind the eyes, in the ... PETER HELLER When one walks, one is brought into touch first of all with the essential relations between one's ph... ALEISTER CROWLEY There is a very old saying that says, "Strike the iron when its hot". So start working on the idea w... JITEN BHATT Do you know that feeling? When everything you do seems like a struggle. Where you dont wanna leave t... ANONYMOUS. . . . Liesl & Po is the embodiment of what writing has always been for me at its purest and most... LAUREN OLIVER Your universe is not out there. You create it every moment and every day with your thoughts, ideas, ... DEBASISH MRIDHA You are the lens in the beam. You can only receive, give, and possess the light as the lens does. If... DAG HAMMARSKJOLD To say that its wrong to feel this way is not the point; you do feel it. All you see is a flash of f... JAMES DICKEY It's strange how the worst day of your life often starts just like any other. You might even complai... JOANNA CANNON She was intimidating and all I could do was sit back on the couch as she paced back and forth, slowl... IN THE MAKING To stand on the brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation—with no feeli... ASK AND IT IS GIVEN As Sokrates tells it, your story begins the moment Eros enters you. That incursion is the biggest ri... ANNE CARSON If you think of your own mother to be the only true mother in the world and thereby start belittling... ABHIJIT NASKAR You are not an ugly person all the time; you are not an ugly person ordinarily; you are not an ugly ... JAMAICA KINCAID When you carry out acts of kindness you get a wonderful feeling inside. It is as though something in... HAROLD KUSHNER Life:
What I came to realize in life so far is that fear, that’s its the worst of it. That’s the... CHADWICK WEBB You hand fits in mine like its made to be but bear this in mind it was meant to be and im joining up... ONE DIRECTION That's the way we see life: your community is your survival. And if you live in a small communit... CAROLYN CHUTE No, you do not have to live as a man; it is an act of moral choice. But you cannot live as anything ... AYN RAND The Biggest Threat to our Democracy, Freedoms and Future is Leadership that fosters and Appeases the... MICHAEL HARRIS The fear of infinity is a form of myopia that destroys the possibility of seeing the actual infinite... GEORG CANTOR However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so ... HENRY DAVID THOREAU Love is a lost gift. Why wish for its return. Why beg for its flame when you've already ... PAVANA पवन I think it's a really wonderful way of looking at leadership development. What we're saying is, if y... JOY AUSTIN The story is one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything ... ORSON SCOTT CARD I suppose there is no place in the world where snobbery is quite so ever-present or where it is cult... GEORGE ORWELL IN ONE IMPORTANT WAY, an abusive man works like a magician: His tricks largely rely on getting you t... LUNDY BANCROFT An emotionally locked person refuses to let go of their sad memories and live in the now. KILROY J. OLDSTER When a miracle happens, even if not to you, its nature is to naturally expand. You can almost feel t... HUGH ELLIOTT Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge ... HENRY JAMES Failure is easy to measure. Failure is an event.Harder to measure is insignificance. A nonevent. Ins... CHARLES YU Your expectation of something unique and dramatic, of some wonderful explosion, is merely hindering ... NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ When love beckons to you follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold y... KAHLIL GIBRAN Life is neither a glorious highlight reel nor a monstrous tragedy. Every day is a good day to live a... KILROY J. OLDSTER The final option to have your book completed is to hire a ghost writer. The challenge with this opti... KYTKA HILMAR-JEZEK You can be the most beautiful person in the world and everybody sees light and rainbows when they lo... C. JOYBELL C. When you live without someone for as long as I have, love becomes this abstract concept, something y... LAURA THALASSA There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, ... ELIAS CANETTI Live your life in such a way that when a video coverage is taken of you either in light or in the da... ISRAELMORE AYIVOR The first thing that an architect must do is to sense that every building you build is a world of it... LOUIS KAHN [Think] of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see,... STEVE GRAND Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn... J.K. ROWLING A line, an area of tone, is not really important because it records what you have seen, but because ... JOHN BERGER C. S. Lewis Centennial Holding [the Way of Affirmation], we see that every created thing is, in i... C. S. LEWIS The passenger liner Ossifar Distana was one of the most luxurious of its kind in space anywhere. It ... CHRISTINA ENGELA
More Jonathan Tropper
Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it's true love, and the answer is this: when the... JONATHAN TROPPER I occasionally experience the discomfort of people assuming my work is autobiographical. JONATHAN TROPPER ...you realize that you don't understand yourself any better than you understand anyone else. JONATHAN TROPPER I'm at my desk before nine, and I go all day. I'm not necessarily productive all day, but re... JONATHAN TROPPER 'Banshee' was kind of a lark. I was getting paid pretty well to write movies no one was maki... JONATHAN TROPPER I may not be old but I’m too old to have this much nothing JONATHAN TROPPER Nobody wants to rock their own life. But, on the other hand, when your life does get rocked, it affo... JONATHAN TROPPER I may have overmothered you and screwed you up in ways large and small, but I think it’s time you ... 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JONATHAN CARROLL Vision is the art of seeing things invisible. JONATHAN SWIFT Your language indicates──and limits──what you think. JONATHAN PRICE Freedom is an illusion. It always comes at a price. Thinking JONATHAN STROUD The stories that bind us, Halli. The stories we live by, that dictate what we do and where we go. Th... JONATHAN STROUD Looks?” the skull said. “Who cares about that? It’s superficial. Outward appearance doesn’t ... JONATHAN STROUD Oh, we'll suffer in silence. You've given us plenty of practice at that. JONATHAN STROUD Because you're unique . You shine like a beacon, attracting the attention of all dark things." It ch... JONATHAN STROUD Nothing could keep me from you. Nothing in life or Death... JONATHAN STROUD I'ts how I want to remember him, the way he was that night: with horrors up ahead and horrors at our... JONATHAN STROUD Well, I make that one murder victim, one police interrogation and one conversation with a ghost,” ... JONATHAN STROUD Death is fugitive; even when you're watching for it, the actual instant somehow slips between your f... JONATHAN STROUD Well, when you're being held at gunpoint by a geriatric madman in a metal skirt, you've kind of hit ... JONATHAN STROUD God rest her soul and may she never walk at night JONATHAN STROUD A dozen more questions occurred to me. Not to mention twenty-two possible solutions to each one, six... JONATHAN STROUD One magician demanded I show him an image of the love of his life. I rustled up a mirror. JONATHAN STROUD According to some, heroic deaths are admirable things. I've never been convinced by this argument, m... JONATHAN STROUD Zealots: Wild eyed persons afflicted with incurable certainty about the workings of the world, a cer... JONATHAN STROUD Then again, Solomon was human. And that meant he was flawed (Go on, take a look at yourself in the m... JONATHAN STROUD Besides, if you're going to die horribly, you might as well do it with style. JONATHAN STROUD More ghosts have been created in bedrooms than anywhere else. JONATHAN STROUD Strange how close the darkness is, even when things seem brightest. Even in the glare of a summer no... JONATHAN STROUD Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly. JONATHAN SWIFT Don't set your wit against a child. JONATHAN SWIFT Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with ... JONATHAN SWIFT It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdo... JONATHAN SWIFT Necessity is the mother of invention, it is true -- but it's father is creativity, and knowledge is ... JONATHAN SCHATTKE Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance. JONATHAN SWIFT If there are amazing graces on this earth, I believe that they are these good children sent to us by... JONATHAN KOZOL The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet w... JONATHAN SWIFT Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives. JONATHAN SWIFT Rebukes are easy from our betters, From men of quality and letters; But when low dunces will ... JONATHAN SWIFT What some people invent the rest enlarge. JONATHAN SWIFT All human race would be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits. JONATHAN SWIFT Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you pleas... JONATHAN SWIFT In church your grandsire cut his throat; to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my he... JONATHAN SWIFT Better belly burst than good liquor be lost. JONATHAN SWIFT We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same. JONATHAN SWIFT Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the wor... JONATHAN SWIFT Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent. JONATHAN SWIFT What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a n... JONATHAN MILLER Coffee makes us severe, and grave, and philosophical. JONATHAN SWIFT Living in cities is an art, and we need the vocabulary of art, of style, to describe the peculiar re... JONATHAN RABAN One of the very best rules of conversation is to never, say anything which any of the company wish h... JONATHAN SWIFT And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to... JONATHAN SWIFT Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. JONATHAN KOZOL Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same positio... JONATHAN SWIFT The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman. JONATHAN SWIFT I wasn't driven into medicine by a social conscience but by rampant curiosity. JONATHAN MILLER For the rest, Whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through e... JONATHAN SWIFT We have a choice: to plow new ground or let the weeds grow. JONATHAN WESTOVER I went to Washington to challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations , JONATHAN KOZOL What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly. JONATHAN SWIFT I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning. JONATHAN SWIFT One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good. JONATHAN SWIFT When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in ... JONATHAN SWIFT 'Tis an old maxim in the schools, That flattery's the food of fools; Yet now and then your men... JONATHAN SWIFT She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitch folk. JONATHAN SWIFT One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of t... JONATHAN RABAN I will venture to affirm, that the three seasons wherein our corn has miscarried did no more contrib... JONATHAN SWIFT It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: a... JONATHAN SWIFT Come, agree, the law's costly. JONATHAN SWIFT There's none so blind as they that won't see. JONATHAN SWIFT Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own; wh... JONATHAN SWIFT Brutes find out where their talents lie; A bear will not attempt to fly, A foundered horse w... JONATHAN SWIFT Over emphatic negatives always suggest that what is being denied may be what is really being asserte... JONATHAN RABAN But when a Man JONATHAN SWIFT Pretense is the overrating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to. JONATHAN SWIFT There are two sorts of hypocrites; ones that are deceived with their outward morality and external r... JONATHAN EDWARDS Attitudes to museums have changed. If it had Marilyn Monroe's knickers or Laurence Olivier's jockstr... JONATHAN MILLER Grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected. JONATHAN EDWARDS I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words ... JONATHAN SWIFT Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age. JONATHAN SWIFT Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth,... JONATHAN SWIFT I wont quarrel with my bread and butter. JONATHAN SWIFT I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing. JONATHAN SWIFT It was a bold person that first ate an oyster. JONATHAN SWIFT A bad forgery's the ultimate insult. JONATHAN GASH Promises and pie crusts are made to be broken. JONATHAN SWIFT