Tampa Book Buzz

great opening lines:spoiled rotten america:outrages of everyday life by larry miller

I don’t know about you, but I spend half my life looking at people through Norman Rockwell lenses: loving them, seeing their decency and generosity, smiling at the foibles of their children, feeling their sweetness and cheerful good manners in every small encounter of the day; watching the gentle rustle of a tree in the low, western sun and knowing, really knowing, the perfect joy of it; and so, so grateful for the mysterious good fortune to be born here, now, together.

The other half of the time, I look around me and think, “How sweet it would be to kill them all.”

Do you know that feeling?  Do you know what I mean?  Of course you do.  We all do.

Most people swing back and forth between light and dark like a sliver-backed gorilla with nothing but time.  Sometimes people act out their good instincts.  This is called charity.  Sometimes they act out their bad instincts.  This is called strangling.  And sometimes they shuffle quietly from home to work and back again, simply puzzled by it all.  This is called The Rest of Us.

—-Spoiled Rotten America:Outrages of Everyday Life by Larry Miller