The Goodbye Song Quotes

“If I told you the few things keeping me alive,
Don’t run, don’t laugh, don’t cry.
Just forgive me for being soft in life,
I am one of those things that die”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“People are born on this planet with no choice at all
And have to spend most of their life working to pay it off.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“Death is the ultimate vacation: you’re with the stars, you don’t have to pay rent, everyone loves you, and nothing hurts. So, it’s very important you save death for later.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“A cell.

An accident.

A person who would’ve been miserable anyway.
An appointment.

A religious order.

An expense.

A political debate.

Anything but a soul. “Why?”

I don’t care who fights for my life.

I care that they do.
They aren’t sure

When my life starts,

But they tell me when it ends.

My body, my rights.

Somebody, where’s mine?

I wasn’t going to come out

As a different thing.

So why am I treated

Like a different thing?

They knew what I’d be,”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“I kinda like being sick. A very strong fever. It’s the perfect condition. You get to have someone take care of you. You feel cold all day, so you snuggle up in a blanket and shiver and sweat. Warm music. The only thing you can think about is how weak your body is, so you get to forget about the rest of the world for a couple days. And my body can finally know how my brain feels like every day. Nothing matters, except how terrible your pain is. It’s like a meditation. An alignment. Then to top it all off, there’s the hope and assurance you’ll get better soon.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“These are icebreakers. You’re not supposed to break the ice, you’re just supposed to coat your voice with as many layers of confidence as possible so that they don’t hear your voice shake when it’s your turn to speak. Idiot.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“Don’t tell the wealthy that the nightly humming they hear in order to sleep is made possible from the distant wheels of a midnight cart being rolled by a man who dreams of a bed.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“She wrote short stories because she said no to parties.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“In 1961, a recovering addict was saved by the works of an uplifting novelist. Months later, the man found out his role model committed suicide one morning. Liar, he cried. It was like watching his hero say that heroes don’t exist and then flying away. What do books mean if the writer gave up? The reader decided to give heroism a try and wrote stories about how great life can be until he could convince himself of it. The experiment is still in the works.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“Toulouse is to lose.
Good on us,

That one never lied
And said it’s still alive.
A full life is a series
Of incompletions.
Whole with holes.
Entirely fragmented.
Carrying one-days,
Sentences,
Old lovers,
And looks.
Absolutes turn men and women

Into machines that need

Numbers to work.

But people were never meant to work
Just to live.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“I think life is one big fluctuation between horniness and a sincere quest for meaning. We just call one the other.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“He spent decades researching his imagination. During this, he gave up the creation of children, the thrill of romance, and even religion for what he believed to be the most important story he could write. When you read his pages, and knew what was sacrificed, each chapter provided you an obscure timeline of a life he never got to live. The publishers will lie and say it costs twelve dollars plus tax.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“Beat him until he softens. Lift his ragged body and raise him with your whiskey breath. Get him out alive. Watch from your grave as he beats his own child, because you beat him, because yours beat you, because his beat his, because his beat his...”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“Trauma and tragedy will continue to cook, that is until one day, one person chooses to do something good for no reason.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“While it happened, 
I could see the rest of my life
But now it’s over and that’s life.
Moments deserve their peace.
What can I say? 
It’s a different day.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“The Day:
Wondering if I’m mental
Wondering if you are
Stretching my spine
Masturbating then hating it
Falling in love on aisle 12
Acting tough in public
Singing in the shower
Lotioning my untouched body
Fretting about my skin
Missing her again
And when I’m about to sleep,
I wish I could just fast forward
To wondering if I’m mental.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“In case you didn’t know

I too went home after the ceremony

And replayed the silent pauses of our failed encounter.
I thought of a new clever thing I wish I said

And you’ll never know it and I won’t know yours.

In case you didn’t know

I imagine weddings within the first hour of meeting you

I felt your peek, but pretended not to look your way

I looked you up online and now don’t know where to start
That you whispered in my ear and I’ll masturbate

To the once hot air on my neck.

In case you didn’t know

When I turned the corner, I cried.
I thought I heard you, too.
Maybe both our loved ones
Share the same hospital.

In case you didn’t know

I wore bright colors and made the afternoon men laugh,
But tonight I’ll drink to darkness
because I have no one.
They pay me well, but I only want that other thing—
Your poetry, in case I didn’t know.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“We need each other. Sometimes I’ll wonder what all art means after the sun explodes and we go extinct. No contribution is immortal and everything we do is for a temporary humanity. Books will burn, aliens won’t understand our albums, and movies will have no viewer. But something tells me that the sun’s bursting is just an impatient star longing to get its hands on some beautiful, fleeting human communication. Cheers to giving our sun the good read it deserves. And more importantly, a good world.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“We must do because we are here. The universe is a playspace for you to find out cool shit and discover cool people. It’s the purest notion in our hearts, but also the most fragile. Do not lose to cul-de-sacs. Or a small person who says no. Or a large society that points one way. Do not lose to humidity. Or mud. Or boring white walls that say you’re nothing. Don’t fall for the room. It’s not there. Our dreams will never be around us, which is why we have to do the awkward thing of chasing them. It’s bigger than a day job, or even a romance. To be caught up on planetary affairs is to let the wind blow away your existence. You must throw a fishing line at a cloud and climb up the cord. Stay above the soil stompers. They won’t value you, so look away. Planted in you is a self in which the world will fail to see, in which you must make your mission to protect.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“We cannot know everything. We cannot do everything. We are what we chose to have known. We are what we ended up doing. This condition is why you could look around and tell people apart. Time is ticking and we are all fugitives fleeing from random death. And we all flee differently. Thus, with the responsibility of choice, humanity is magical this way.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“Life is as uneventful as looking up right now and staring at your space. How dare men advise courage! It’s imagination we need. Our battlefield is not one of swords and smoke, but of quietness and boredom. If you attempt something extraordinary, it is by Latin prefix, ‘extra’, and no one will understand that part until it happens. And oftentimes, you can’t defeat the quiet with muscle, strength, or toughness, because the thing you are holding is too fragile and could therefore be consequently lost by your tight grip. You must therefore work the other muscle: faith”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“She wrote novels on paper napkins. Sometimes she scribbled on newspapers that the men in suits left behind and made her own poetry with the crossword templates on the back. She wouldn’t make a penny writing. If anything, she was losing pennies. That’s why they trust her art. Her poor, dirty, beautiful art.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“Soldiers were shot outside a poet’s door and a bomber plane was on its way. So he took his manuscript, folded it, and locked it into a tin chest. There was a place east of town where it could be safely buried and found by another someday. He ran out during battle, was shot multiple times in his legs, slithered his way in a swamp of gushing muscle, and alas, could not make it. So, in desperation, he opened up the holes in his stomach and inserted the tin chest where his poems lie safe and died there. One day, a medic will read about birds that chirped on emerald trees.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“Many more looked around at happy and unhappy things alike, left the room, and agreed to the pen. It’s a weird occasion, writing is. It appears as peaceful, silent years of nothing, but implies the valor of someone fighting a lifelong monster. To decide to wield the pen is a win with no victory. But some lines of theirs were more important than satisfaction. What is a bookshelf but a place for us to see all the nights our dearest of friends did not see their own?”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“A writer = a worried person picking up a pen, in the face of death, writing to unlimited strangers to say, “Look!”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“To see love and sacrifice, stand before a bookshelf. To feel love and sacrifice, pick a book and open it. To love and sacrifice, add one.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“Organize their money on a chopping board. Sort out your worth.

$15,000 for outdated textbooks K-12.

$1,000 for a lifetime of flu vaccinations.

$8 an hour to help someone else make money.

$300 a year for food coupons.

$1,000 additional salary for any job that has a chance of expected death.

$600 co-pay on medication for an illness they cause you.

$2,000 for social security.

$15,000 for pension.

$150,000 for the average life insurance policy. $250,000 for a doctor’s fatal mistake.

$350,000 if the doctor made it in a different state.

2/5 of a soul lost in the workplace.

3/5 of a soul lost to fuck for food.

$4,000 to bury someone in the soil.

And there you have you. Easy to make. Affordable. Special.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“The Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Transportation, and other bureaus reserve that a budget for a human life is worth anywhere from 4-10 million dollars. Like a sports car. Like a construction site. Or an airplane. As if the mysterious gift of consciousness could fit in the box of a W-2 form. To them, we are 4 inches of digital ink on a computer screen. Money: if we can’t get rid of it, we can at least admit it doesn’t deserve us.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“We meant to each other The way trophies do: On the day of.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“The estate sale was crowded

But I think the dead actress felt cheated.
Things deserve acquisition, not purchase.

Us customers, searching through her decades,
Will never know what it’s like
To earn a good death.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song