💬 Quotes

"The reason why you can't have nice things is because someone, somewhere, is always trying to turn them into a weapon, a tax, or a secret."

"We are all bitched from the start and you have to be careful of the bitching that comes from outside."

"Art is a lie that makes us realize truth."

"Most people are like static. They are just background noise. But a freak—a real freak—is a melody. A freak is a chord."

"You’re a freak. You’re a wonderful, terrible freak. You’re the best of us."

"When your parents are gods, your childhood is a long, slow fall from heaven."

"Everything is a performance. If you aren’t onstage, you’re just waiting for the next cue."

"I often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had."

"I would have liked to come from a family of witches, but the Blackwoods were never that, though we were always considered as such by the villagers."

"Poor strangers. They have so much to be afraid of. They are always worrying about their houses and their property and their children and their stomachs."

"We are so happy here, Constance. We are so happy. We must never leave the house."

"I don't like people who are afraid. I don't like people who look at us and see what they want to see, instead of what is really there."

"Our house was a castle, and we lived in it, and we were safe."

"It is as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working."

"A bullshit job is one so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that it is not the case."

"The fact that most people are working in jobs that they themselves secretly believe are useless, and that they have to pretend are not, is a profound psychological violence."

"Managerial feudalism is a system where the primary goal of those in power is not to achieve efficiency, but to accumulate as many underlings as possible, thereby inflating their own status and importance."

"If you want to know what’s really wrong with the world, look at the jobs that actually contribute to the well-being of society—teachers, nurses, garbagemen—and compare them to those that don't. The less you contribute, the more you are paid."

"We have created a society where the vast majority of people spend their waking hours performing tasks they believe are unnecessary, all while the society itself faces genuine crises that require urgent, meaningful labor."

"The people who get the most out of life are the ones who put the least into it."