“So who is cruel? You, cruel reader, you are.”
— Johnny Rich
“Actors,” he says, “should only be superficial on the surface.”
— Johnny Rich
“You know, sometimes I even envy myself.”
— Johnny Rich
“There’s no such thing as probability,” she says, slowly, with minimal movement of her jaw. “Things turn out the way they do.”
— Johnny Rich
“He showed videotape of himself committing acts of self-violence and informing news crews that he had been assaulted by a marauding mob of irate art historians.”
— Johnny Rich
“To lose one parent might be considered a misfortune, or a reason to deny God’s existence at the least. To lose two looks like He may be up to something.”
— Johnny Rich
“That small difference made all the difference.”
— Johnny Rich
“Sometimes a butterfly flaps its wings and the weather turns out fine.”
— Johnny Rich
“So, my sweet, did it put the fun into funeral?”
— Johnny Rich
“I guarantee it will change your life, but only because everything does, however small.”
— Johnny Rich
“Genes do not make an individual homosexual. They play their part, but so does the rest of the universe.”
— Johnny Rich
“He’s a typical existentialist. And that’s a contradiction in terms if ever there was one.”
— Johnny Rich
“I’ve often been criticised, but never critically wounded”
— Johnny Rich
“Rejection is no badge of honour.”
— Johnny Rich
“Even Damocles developed a routine.”
— Johnny Rich
“Adam & Eve have been degraded, reduplicated forever, photocopies of photocopies, mistakes copied, magnified, augmented.”
— Johnny Rich
“As thoroughly as mankind has killed God, the reader has despatched the author.”
— Johnny Rich
“Nothing is over our heads if we hold them high enough.”
— Johnny Rich
“A thrilling story can be dull if told badly, but even the most mundane event can be elevated into a tale of epic scale by a good storyteller.”
— Johnny Rich
“Those who perpetrate stories must act cruelly.”
— Johnny Rich
“Anyone can be a story. Everyone is.”
— Johnny Rich
“Even when I press against him his presence is too far away.”
— Johnny Rich
“Being gay is not just what I do, but who I am. It is part of how I choose to live my life even if I never chose.”
— Johnny Rich
“Wouldn’t a no one do as well as a someone about whom nothing can be said?”
— Johnny Rich
“The only simple truth is that there is nothing simple in this complex universe. Everything relates. Everything connects”
— Johnny Rich
“The silence was pregnant with noise, with muted fury, with questions the father found too disgusting to frame and with answers to which the son was incapable of giving voice.”
— Johnny Rich
“Silent is an anagram of listen.”
— Johnny Rich
“Is cruelty still cruel if it is necessary? Is cruelty still cruel if it is part of a lie?”
— Johnny Rich
“These are the things you don’t say, even to someone you love.”
— Johnny Rich
“The bacteria of resentment bred: distance turned to distrust; distrust turned to bitterness; bitterness to hate, which is, after all, a kind of grievous love”
— Johnny Rich