1
Parents raise children then grow old, and their children forget the things their old parents did for them, because their brains don’t remember before they grew selfish. There are buildings all over the world full of old people sitting around looking out of windows, full of hate for their selfish sons and daughters. And meanwhile, the selfish sons and daughters look out of their windows at their children playing and think how wonderful their unbreakable bond of love is between them and their children.Craig Stone
2
We used to talk and smile seven days ago when I was wearing a suit. Now I'm dressed in a beard and smell of dog shit I don’t even get eye contact. I ask her how her week is going, and she looks to her friend behind the counter as if to say: I think this creep is hitting on me. Shall we call the police?Craig Stone
3
The word begone is a Russian doll. A small, single word, which contains so many others; and when all the smaller words inside line up, they look like a bridge: Be Beg Ego Go On One.Craig Stone
4
Some days I am the flower beneath the machine. And the machine rolls slowly on, blocking the sun, without a care for what it tramples beneath.Craig Stone
5
The days and the light feel like brief moments of torture, put here to remind us of what we don’t have any more. Joy is instantaneous, that, is the wonder of joy. Misery and suffering sneak up on someone like a bastard. They drip into your brain slowly, over time. Until one morning you wake up crying and you have no idea why.Craig Stone
6
When human men hold an object that makes a powerful noise, or has moving parts, or spins around fast, or has a button they can push (which either screws or nails something) they become Gods in their own heads. They can do anything: they can eat through walls and bring buildings together to form mighty empires. They can build floating cities and flying tin cans. But they still can’t make their own beds. .Craig Stone
7
Without the sleeping bag I'm just somebody up early in the morning, sitting under a tree. With the sleeping bag I'm nobody up early, sitting under a tree: a slight, but important difference in how I’ll be perceived.Craig Stone
8
My eyes open after my mind. All eyes always do.Craig Stone
9
Nobody has to do anything wrong to end up living a life that feels like it’s not their own, all they have to do is take a step back, and hope for the best.Craig Stone
10
You are put in school to be trained to become exactly what they want you to be: not them, anything but them. They live on a golden island and have the key to the only bridge. Your parents are not millionaires, so it doesn't matter how intelligent you are, you aren't invited to their party. That’s the great shame. The idiots have the gold, and the poor die to give it to them. So you better start to laugh, because this world is one big joke written by the few, at the expense of the masses. Look around you, that feeling your life isn't going anywhere? That’s the feeling that makes you part of the masses. .Craig Stone
11
Sleep doesn't come easy when a broken twig conjures images of a hulking mental patient snapping the arms off children, over by the bin.Craig Stone
12
His smile is a stranger resting on a haunted face, only coming out for poisons turning him into a ghost.Craig Stone
13
He brings the cigarette butt to his mouth and lights up. He breathes in, and coughs; a rattling helicopter with a broken blade crashing into a herd of trombone playing sheep falling off a cliff into a DIY shop with a discount on spanners.Craig Stone
14
I don’t want to wake up. I can’t feel the cold of life. I can’t feel fear in my dreams. When awake we are green and red bits glowing under a machine, lights turn off and on, and people of science convince themselves they know what’s going on. Backs are patted, hand are shaken. Test, record, collect. They tell us what we already know. We are all dying, dying slow. When awake, there is a feeling of impending doom, and if you can’t feel it, close your eyes, or open them further. When we’re in a box underground, heaven is finally above us, but it’s not in the sky. Heaven is the planet we lived on, and all of the angels are people. Here, in a dream, it’s just me floating in the back of my mind, among parts we don’t fully understand.Craig Stone
15
Blobfish, the guy who snapped a hamsters neck, myself, the homeless guy who has never thrown a punch (but has killed a fox) and Dickface, the man obsessed with trees and touching himself in public, follow an arrogant midget into the home of a pale creature I am certain will kill us all, to save the life of an ungrateful bastard parrot called Madness.The temperature drops further. A cold night for heroes.Craig Stone
16
Stale beer sticks to wobbling tables. The cigarette machine flashes in the corner, mocking smokers who never have any change on them. There’s no natural light in this pub, so it’s dark and gloomy. The pain on the face of the staff tells its own story: overworked, underpaid, exploited and treated as expendable. I feel at home with them. They’re so scared they will be fired from their terrible jobs, every time I order a beer they ask me if I want any peanuts or crisps, in case between drinks I’ve turned into the dreaded mystery shopper. The air is chewy and weighs heavy on the skin. The fruit machines in the corners don’t make a sound, aware this is the last stop saloon for the drunk few who can’t afford to gamble properly. Everyone here is down to their last pint and pound.Craig Stone
17
Cambodian dust whipped up in the wind and stuck to my clothes like clay. I put a hand between my face and the sun and blinked Phnom Penn dust from my tired eyes. One idea, drink, beamed light in all directions across my dark consciousness. A slim lady walked toward me with a big smile and a bigger head. Her left hand rested on her waggling hips and her right hand rose above her head, limp-wristed, like she’d just thrown a winning ball toward a basket and was leaving her hand in the shot position. The lady walking toward me was a man. At least that much was clear, but the nature or our relationship was still a fog to me. She wore blue jeans and a white top accentuating her breasts, but her Adam’s apple and cow sized hands revealed more in daylight than she could hide at night.Craig Stone
18
Love is born from disagreeing over something we believe in. Hate is born from disagreeing over something we fear.Craig Stone
19
I stared up in disbelief at the information my eyes fed my brain, and lost myself to the stars. For the first time in my life I had a greater idea of how infinitesimally small our planet really is and, furthermore, how tiny and insignificant I am in the grand scheme of the vast universe. I took a seat on a rock next to Lily and took in the moment to comprehend the vastness of everything else, and the incredible smallness of I.Craig Stone
20
I listened to the crashing thundering of a tiny tear tumbling like a wave down her beautiful face.Craig Stone
21
I was just another lost soul screaming through the paper thin hotel walls into the ears of the fucked.Craig Stone
22
Friday dusk becomes Friday evening. The park is feverish with life. A young Asian man screams into his mobile phone, not stopping to listen: a young man with his heart in his penis.Craig Stone
23
The question should be who do we want to be when we grow up, not what.Craig Stone
24
I was staying in a hotel in San Francisco for a couple of nights, before flying back to the UK. My hotel was a desperate grey block made from paper and people’s screams. At night the sound of strangers having icy sex echoed off the building and poured through the broken air conditioning, like tiny daggers I couldn't see, reminding me of just the tip of what I was missing.Craig Stone
25
My landlord lives in the flat at the bottom of the stairs. I rent a studio flat from him, and live at the top of the staircase. There are two more flights of stairs and four more flats, but it’s me he is obsessed with.Craig Stone
26
There’s only one Earth, and it’s tiny, but evil human leaders avoid problems they don’t want to resolve by giving them names which make the problems sound like they’re taking place in a different world: they make people not care about other people dying of starvation by calling the place the dying live “the third world.Craig Stone
27
They put money into attack, by calling it defence.Craig Stone
28
A watched pot never boils, but if I took my eyes from these negative thoughts for a second they would spill over the edges of my lips, and boil the beautiful moment alive as we lived it.Craig Stone
29
Small quarrels and tensions were expected because of our new environment. Every relationship has them. Each quarrel was soon forgotten and floated away on a wave. And then sometimes, on our silly days, the arguments returned on the wave, but the wave returned taller, a Tsunami, and neither of us knew where to run or what to do.Craig Stone