20 Quotes by Jennifer Arnett

The mind is weak, and it must be mastered, controlled. The body, it knows no master save for instinct and, unfortunately, it is built for terminal suffering.

He'd done this hundreds of times: done a job, been drugged with a narcotic that erased his short term memory, and dumped in a seedy hole in the wall locale, where when he climbed out, he would have to figure out where he was, find a payphone, and call in for his next job.

A billion stars above us coat the sky white. It would have been beautiful back home, but not here. Here it is the ever present reminder that we are all alone and insignificant.

The thing about the ocean is that the surface won’t always tell you what is going on underneath.

He needs a purpose, even if it kills him.

John spent the morning rebuilding his SOS sign on the beach. He says that he saw a commercial airliner pass over. I’m not sure if the trying circumstances have made him delusional, or if the plane was too high to see his small sign. I think he saw what he wanted to see.

I felt civilized.

I once watched a small hermit crab crawl out of its shell and into a larger one nearby. Maybe we are no different. There were those before us and there will be some after us. All we can do is cultivate what is given to us. Maybe our lot in this life is to leave our shells better than when we found them so that the next soul will flourish here.

Retirement homes are never lovely places. The food is usually overcooked, the carpet stained from overactive bowels, and the smell of hand lotion, cheap perfume, and urine never really leaves the place, no matter how many times the beds are washed and the walls are scrubbed. They are a place of holding, a purgatory to the not-yet-dead.