How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
He pretty much ignored them all, and that night it struck Billy as never before how completely they were all bound up in one another. You can deny him, he thought, watching his father across the table. You can hate him, love him, pity him, never speak to or look him in the eye again, never deign even to be in his crabbed and bitter presence, but you're still stuck with the son of a b****. One way or another he'll always be your daddy, not even all-powerful death was going to change that. (Bully.20)
That's family for you, eh? You can't pick 'em, and you can't kill 'em. Wait. No. It's "you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose." No. That's not it, either. "Family: can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em." Yeah. That's it. There ya go.
Quote #5
But this was enough, just chilling on a warm Indian-summer day, a sweet abeyance in the golden tone of the light and nothing to do but sit in lawn chairs or sprawl on blankets and let the morning lazily take its course. Two years ago Billy couldn't have done this, the very notion of family time would have sent him running down the street tearing off his clothes. I am a changed man, Billy solemnly told himself. (Bully.82)
What is it about family time that seems like torture? Sure, as a teenager you're practically required to hate your family—it's like a rite of passage—but even as adults, forced-family-fun time can be a killer. Just think about every overwrought holiday event you've ever been to, and you know that at least one person wanted to run down the street naked. Well…okay. Maybe just we did.
Quote #6
You'd think family would be the one sure thing in life, the gimme? Points you got just for being born? So much thick, meaty stuff bound you to these people, so many interlocking spirals of history, genetics, common cause, and struggle that it should be the most basic of all drives, that you would strive to protect and love one another, yet this bond that should be the big no-brainer was in fact the hardest thing. For proof all you had to do was take a quick poll of Bravo. On Holliday's last visit home before shipping out, his brother told him, I hope you f***in' die in Iraq. When Mango was fifteen his father cracked his skull with a monkey wrench, and Mrs. Mango's comment was, So maybe now you'll stop pissing your father off. Dime's grandfather and one of his uncles were suicides. Lake's mother was an OxyContin addict who'd done time, his father a dealer who ditto. When Crack was eleven years old his mother ran off with the assistant pastor of their church. Shroom, he barely had a family. A-bort's father had been the deadbeat poster dad for the state of Louisiana, and Sykes's father and brothers blew up their house cooking meth.
Yes, family was key, Billy decided. If you could figure out how to live with family then you'd gone a long way toward finding your peace, but for that, the finding, the figuring out, you needed a strategy. So where did you go for that?
(Bully.216)
Whoa. And we thought that having the TV taken away when we were grounded for sneaking out past curfew was rough.