Quotes

Excerpts from Mercurys's Wake Day One Before Chaos by Stephanie Vlahos.

She wanted to cry, but she couldn't. She turned away from the infinite vista. She had to because within it, she could see herself.

Oh, and then he left something next to his whiskey glass, a sliver of paper saying, “You're a vegan. It shows.” “And it was weighted by a glass tear, you know, like the Man Ray photo? Weird.”

“Surely, you're not afraid?” “No, but we live in fragile times”

“I've never considered playing the odds. Don't we all have the same script, you know, grow up, do well in school, go to college, graduate, play a little bit before you hunker down into a job, build your 401K enough so someone will look after you when you're old?” “Uh, no”

“Ah, the conceit of youth, how I miss it. As much as I'd love to engage in dialectics, I'm less predisposed under the circumstances.”

Caesars Palace was a place where failure and success joined like the infinity sign. Its world turned on the axis of misspent lives and refrigerated dreams smelling of expensive liquor.

He'd love to take long drives along the beaches south of LA, stopping at the Date Shake Shack for what else? A date shake chased by a potent cocktail with his intellectual surfer buddies. Where? At the Boom Boom Room in Laguna Beach. After drinks, they'd wander onto the beach and stay up late around a campfire, talking semiotics or reading William Burroughs till they woke up covered in sand to the noise of low-flying passenger jets hauling themselves skyward in morning flight paths

“There she stood, an avenging angel, an angel who stood proud whether dressed in blue plastic or a terrycloth robe. Rhea.”

“I'd like to say that once the old assholes die, there won't be any new assholes to replace them, that people are evolving, but I can't

“I'm a writer.” “Are you?” “Yeah, I'm writing a screenplay that's an excerpt from a larger novel.” “What's it about?” “I guess it's about what you can't escape.” “And that is?” “What's in front of you.” “Oh, fate.” “No, life.”