In 2001, during my 23-year stint as an FBI special agent, my colleagues and I looked into what Kaczynski, McVeigh and Rudolph had in common. The results were startling. All three were highly intelligent and well educated, with no previous history of criminal violence. But they all shared a profound inability to forge meaningful relationships.

― Beware the lone wolf radicals - health - 04 September 2011 - New Scientist

As Michelle’s form became smaller Paul distantly felt the implication, from his previous thoughts, which he’d forgotten, that the universe in its entirety was simply a message, delivered to itself, to not feel bad—an obscure but comprehensive rhetoric against feeling bad—and he was troubled by this, suspecting that his thoughts and intentions, at some point, in April or May or years ago, in college or as a small child, had been wrong, but he had continued in that wrongness, and was now distanced from some correct beginning to such a degree that the universe (and himself, a part of the universe) was articulately against him.

― RELATIONSHIP STORY by Tao Lin - Vice Magazine

No, I think it’s more like a compulsion really along the lines of stealing a car or living life as a peeping tom. I’m sure there’s a large deal of ego involved. There has to be. Think about it. Okay, Nathanael West didn’t say it right, I need to add more. Collette didn’t quite get it right. I need to add my two cents. Every word is really a big wad of loogie in the face of the past when it comes down to it.

― The Rumpus Interview With Scott McClanahan - The Rumpus.net

One woman saying she wants or needs violent sex does not negate another woman’s disgust at the idea of violent sex but it is damaging to try and silence either of those perspectives.

― Still With The Scarlet Letters by Roxane Gay - The Rumpus.net

She could have been talking about Ryder. He too had the secret power and hair like pennies, but it was from a bottle. The first time I slept with him I held it out of his face with my hands, ruminating in my mind how I was sleeping with the eccentric lover that I was always supposed to sleep with. You know, that kind of lover. The kind that wants to sit on the floor and smoke pot and show you their baby pictures all night. The kind of person that tries on your roommate’s green fur coat and kisses you on the fire escape and then goes into the bathroom to do heroin and comes out and asks you to braid his hair. The kind that can turn on you at any moment. The kind that makes every following relationship look pale.

― Chloe Caldwell: The Last Book I Loved, Mathilda Savitch - The Rumpus.net