I miss that time. The cities back then, just after the forests died, were full of wonders, and you'd stumble on them--these princes of the air on common rooftops--the rivers that burst through the city streets so they ran like canals--the rabbits in parking garages--the deer foaling, nestled in Dumpsters like a Nativity.
Matthew Tobin AndersonEmpedolces claims that in utero, our backbone is one long solid; and that through the constriction of the womb and the punishments of birth it must be snapped again and again to form our vertebrae; that for the child to have a spine, his back must first be broken
Matthew Tobin AndersonI wanted to say something to cheer her up. I had a feeling that cheering her up might be a lot of work. I was thinking of how sometimes, trying to say the right thing to people, itโs like some kind of brain surgery, and you have to tweak exactly the right part of the lobe. Except with talking, itโs more like brain surgery with old, rusted skewers and things, maybe like those things you use to eat lobster, but brown. And you have to get exactly the right place, and youโre touching around in the brain but the patient, she keeps jumping and saying, โOw.
Matthew Tobin AndersonTeens are not like the weird, dumb dwarves you have around your house. They are actually you when you were younger.
Matthew Tobin Anderson...they told me of color, that it was an illusion of the eye, an event in the perceiver's mind, not in the object; they told me that color had no reality; indeed, they told me that color did not inhere in a physical body any more than pain was in a needle. And then they imprisoned me in darkness; and though there was no color there, I still was black, and they still were white; and for that, they bound and gagged me.
Matthew Tobin Anderson