24 Quotes by Chris Campanioni

Always being myself and my salve, which is life. I’m not lonely, if that’s what it seems like. Always writing things down.

To be a writer and political is a dangerous thing. To be a writer and apolitical is even more dangerous. Art is right, left; in truth, it has only one direction and that is forward.

The convenient function of every celebrated machine for living is to produce machines to live in them.

Some people travel for the culture, or the place’s history, or the sheer experience. Our aim is total dissolution. We travel from Egypt to Estonia, big clunky blocks of metal hanging from our necks, naïve and stuttering and asking all the right questions at all the right times—“Is this the Great Wall I’ve been hearing so much about?”—flashing a few photos and no one looks twice, except maybe to point and laugh but we are just harmless Americans come for a tour of life on the other side.

I want the reader to get the feeling that the text is trying to rearrange itself, upon every reading or in the act of reading. I don't want the presentation of narrative; I want a life told out of order.

I couldn’t decide whether it was better to be the art, or the artist.

Half of life is pretending. The other half is pretending.

Tangerine tango was still in. Cardigans without buttons were in. Bahia bands were in. Senhor do Bonfim. Make a wish? But hardly anyone considered the most radical move: be yourself. Beauty is always a revolutionary act.

To own beauty is the first lie of it.