‘Revenge of the Lawn’ by Richard Brautigan

I have been reading Richard Brautigan’s collection of (very) short stories, Revenge of the Lawn, on my daily commute over the last few days as they’re easy to read and fun to dip into. Rather than attempt to review Brautigan’s wacky stories here are a few of my favourite quotes from the collection.

Her garbage had lied to me.

She opened her purse which was like a small autumn field and near the fallen branches of an old apple tree, she found her keys.

One day he decided that his liking for poetry could not be fully expressed in just reading poetry or listening to poets reading on phonograph records. He decided to take the plumbing out of his house and completely replace it with poetry, and so he did.

I sat down and looked the bus over to see who was there, and it took me about a minute to realize that there was something very wrong with that bus, and it took the other people about the same period to realize that there was something very wrong with the bus, and the thing that was wrong was me.

I was a child, then, though now I look like somebody else.

This might have been a funny story if it weren’t for the fact that people need a little loving and, God, sometimes it’s sad all the shit they have to go through to find some.

   ‘Satisfied?’ she said.
   She’s an Aries.
   ‘Yes,’ I said.
   I’m an Aquarius.
   We also had two pumpkins: both Scorpios.

They were healthy, normal sex fiends.

Whenever I see watercress, which isn’t very often, I think of the rich. I think they are the only people who can afford it and they use watercress in exotic recipes that they keep hidden in vaults from the poor.