The first question people insist on asking a new acquaintance is: What do you do for a living? I hated that. Insecurity, probably, because I’m not a lawyer or a doctor or any of those other professions that make people say, ‘Oh...’ in that reverent, awestruck way. And anyone unlucky enough to ask me that fatal question without preceding it with at least two others--for example, what books have you read lately or who’s your favorite ballplayer--was answered with:
‘I’m a lumberjack.’
Because any person with a greater interest in what it is I do to earn enough money to afford rent and music and beer and food and jeans--rather than in the fact that I think Bill Lee is the coolest guy ever to climb onto the pitchers mound--deserves to think I spend my days in the woods cutting down trees.
--Chapter 3, WFS
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There were no bells or lightning bolts or fireworks, no angelic chorus from heaven singing Hallelujah. I just knew, in the same way I knew that I had to pee. It was that primal and that obvious. I wanted him, yes. It was Want. But a want of all of him. His mind and heart and body and laughter; his words and smile and soul and life. His life.
I wanted the rest of his life.
--Chapter 22, WFS
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I tightened my grip around the gun. It was still in my pocket but it wouldn’t be for long. My finger was on the trigger now, and I could do it. Right now. Blow his stupid, disgusting, fucking head off before he even knew it was coming. Watch the bullet pierce through it, maybe right through his eye, and wouldn’t that be great? Even if his blood and brains and bone got on me, even it covered me, all of it. It made me smile and I kept right on smiling, even though it meant getting something in my mouth; blood or brain or bone. I didn’t care.
--Chapter 27, WFS
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"Why don’t you tell me something, Tess. Why is it that you’re satisfied to just exist? To live in half a house that’s falling apart? How can you paint all these awesome pictures—create all this fucking amazing, honest art—and then just let it rot on the wall upstairs? And why do you lie to yourself and say you don’t want kids when you really do? And make just enough money to pay your bills and not any more than that, even though you work your ass off and could make--”
“Money? What the hell does money have to do with anything?”
“It’s not the money, Tess. It’s you. It’s...it’s about worth. And feeling like you have some."
--Chapter 36, WFS