Attention. Deficit. Disorder.. Brad Listi

       Attention. Deficit. Disorder.

      a novel

      BRAD LISTI

       To my parents, Frank and Peggy Listi

       Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

      —SEXTUS PROPERTIUS

      Familiarity breeds contempt.

      —SYRUS

      A penny saved is a penny earned.

      —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

      You can’t take it with you.

      —MOSS HART AND GEORGE S. KAUFMAN

      God must love the common man, he made so many of them.

      —ABRAHAM LINCOLN

      God must hate the common man, he made him so common.

      —PHILIP WYLIE

      I’ve steered clear of God. He was an incredible sadist.

      —JOHN COLLIER

      There is a superstition in avoiding superstition.

      —FRANCIS BACON

      There’s a sucker born every minute.

      —P. T. BARNUM

      Man is a social animal.

      —BARUCH SPINOZA

      Man is a political animal.

      —ARISTOTLE

      Man is the measure of all things.

      —PROTAGORAS

       Man is a blind, witless, low-brow anthropocentric clod who inflicts lesions upon the earth.

      —IAN MCHARG

      The main thing needed to make men happy is intelligence…and it can be fostered by education.

      —BERTRAND RUSSELL

      Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountainheads.

      —JAMES NORTHCOTE

      All paid employments absorb and degrade the mind.

      —ARISTOTLE

      A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

      —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

      If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

      —DALAI LAMA

      Happiness? That’s nothing more than health and a poor memory.

      —ALBERT SCHWEITZER

      A humanitarian is always a hypocrite.

      —GEORGE ORWELL

      Sisyphus was basically a happy man.

      —ALBERT CAMUS

      Every actual state is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

      —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

      What do I care about the law? Hain’t I got the power?

      —CORNELIUS VANDERBILT

       Reality is a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs.

      —LILY TOMLIN

      Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.

      —JIMI HENDRIX

      There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.

      —ALFRED KORZYBSKI

      The no-mind not-thinks no-thoughts about no-things.

      —BUDDHA

      The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.

      —CESARE PAVESE

      Always be sincere, even when you don’t mean it.

      —IRENE PETER

      When a man has pity on all living creatures, then only is he noble.

      —BUDDHA

      I tend to be suspicious of people whose love of animals is exaggerated; they are often frustrated in their relationships with humans.

      —YLLA

      He gave her a look you could have poured on a waffle.

      —RING LARDNER

      The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

      —H. L. MENCKEN

      The body of a dead enemy always smells sweet.

      —AULUS VITELLIUS

       Rubble is trouble.

      —MUHAMMAD ALI

      The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.

      —PAUL VALÉRY

      A conclusion is the place where you got tired thinking.

      —MARTIN H. FISCHER

      A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved.

      —CHARLES F. KETTERING

      The certainties of one age are the problems of the next.

      —R. H. TAWNEY

      This is my death…and it will profit me to understand it.

      —ANNE SEXTON

      I’m not afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

      —WOODY ALLEN

      The universe is but one vast Symbol of God.

      —THOMAS CARLYLE

      Taken as a whole, the universe is absurd.

      —WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

      Put three grains of sand inside a vast cathedral, and the cathedral will be more closely packed with sand than space is with stars.

      —SIR JAMES JEANS

      When it is dark enough you can see the stars.

      —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

      Table of Contents

       Cover Page

       Title Page

       Dedication

       Epigraph

Part I

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