Doug Cooper

“I am two people. One goes through the motions, rolling from one thing to the next; the other is withdrawn, watching a complete stranger.”

“There's nothing like an orgasm to make a person think--and more often than not, to think too much.”

“Rationalization is foreplay with one's conscience.”

“There's nothing like an orgasm to force a person to think--and more often than not, to think too much.”

“I’m like a fish in a pool, turning quickly to avoid what challenges it. My only decision is whether to go right or left to sidestep confrontation.”

“I'm learning quickly, once you quit one thing, it gets easier and easier just to leave situations rather than deal with shit.”

“What you see is what you get. The island is imaginative enough. Creativity don’t need to be wasted on naming things.”

“You earn brotherhood—the purest friendship, trust, love, whatever you want to call it—moment by moment through how you treat others.”

“All that remains is to forge the #commitment. Regardless of how right everything feels, words never last.”

“To exist here, I’ll have to become skilled in saying no—an art in which I was once well accomplished, but one I no longer care to practice.”

“Silence has built walls, walls that I attempt to break by pedaling faster, only to be imprisoned a hundred feet down the road.”

“Variety may be the spice of life, but consistency pays the bills.”

“Cause and effect are rarely directly related. Justice has a mind of her own.”

“I never get used to the faces--wide-eyed and full of possibility--staring bad at me.”

“Even the best buzz wears off, and you wake up more trapped than the day before.”

“Questions from earlier circle like buzzards. Am I running away or moving forward?”

“Nothing worse than someone who goes to the dance, is excited to dance, dances all night, and then complains all the next day about his feet being sore.”

“Now I feel free, and hope is creeping back. Maybe because I'm paying attention to what I have rather than what's missing.”

“My discontent has accumulated over the past months, searching for a leak in the dam I’ve constructed to separate my true feelings from the situation closing in around me.”

“When compared side by side, my days can barely be distinguished from one another. The only difference is what I do after work and with whom I do it.”