Book//mark – The Wisdom of Perversity | Rafael Yglesias, 2015

 “The world is chock-full of monsters.”

“Maybe becoming a monster is a sign of strength.”

“You have to feed the press or they’ll eat you.”

“Sooner or later everyone is defeated by their desires.”

“You could become anyone, including your real self.”

“I’m willing to keep an open mind about the existence of God or whether or not Joye’s Ulysses is
a great novel, but I have no doubt that one way or another child molesters are nurtured, not born.”

“For a while she had a vague longing to be a psychologist. “Talking therapy is dead,”
Gary said when she raised the idea. “It’s all pills now.”

“Jeff had learned the wisdom of perversity and made his lonely secret into art.”

“It was always the most striking scene, the best work, the most disturbing emotion and
unsettling idea that attracts criticism.”

“There’s nothing that makes an artist more beloved than the audience pitying him
because his work comes at a price they would never pay.”

“Also, serial killers, child killers, they’re hot, they’re the new cool kids, the new vampires,
the new zombies, everybody’s favourite spook monster.”

“Percocet? Seriously?” Brian laughed bitterly. “That’s so nineties.
He should at least update his addictions.”

“Gary was a righteous man, frank about his lusts, and they were the lusts of the
righteous: for sugar and fat and the succour of a wife.”

“Little girls think their fathers will save them. Women know better.”

“After puberty, you look to one sex for more than friendship and
to the other for less-than-complete intimacy.”

“Something about Christmas decorations inspired delinquency.”

“You see, I’m not the hack. God is. And the Old Fart doesn’t know how to write a
conclusion that’ll satisfy his audience. He leaves that to us, his lost children, doing
his dirty work, inventing uplifting endings to erase his mistakes.”

Rafael Yglesias, The Wisdom of Perversity, 2015