What could he do but accept the disturbing extent to which memory was fictional and hope that the fiction lay at the service of a truth less richly represented by the original facts?
There's a blast of palpable stupidity that comes from our host, like opening the door of a sauna. The best way to contradict him is to let him speak.
The trouble with not being a psychopath. Every avenue was blocked.
Thanks for putting that in terms I can easily grasp,’ said Malcolm, without showing the patronizing bitch the slightest sign of irony.
She was ghastly and quite mad, but when I grew up I figured her worst punishment was to be herself and I didn't have to do anything more.
She liked the feeling that Maine was basically inhospitable, that it would soon shake out its summer visitors, like a dog on a beach.
She imagined vodka poured over ice and all the cubes that had been frosted turning clean and collapsing in the glass and the ice cracking, like a spine in the hands of a confident osteopath.
Presumably those who enjoyed inflicting cruelty could hardly believe their luck and set about popularizing the superstition that their victims could only achieve peace of mind by forgiving them.’ ‘You
Og likevel kjente Patrick at han var trukket mot sin fars død av en sterkere tilbøyelighet til å ta etter ham, enn han var i stand til å holde ut. Døden var selvsagt alltid en fristelse; men nå virket...
Nothing so stubborn could change until it became more painful to avoid than to confront.
Nobody ever died of a feeling, he would say to himself, not believing a word of it, as he sweated his way through the feeling that he was dying of fear. People died of feelings all the time, once they...
No, he mustn't think about it, or indeed about anything, and especially not about heroin, because heroin was the one thing that really worked, the only thing that stopped him scampering around in a ha...
Just as a novelist may sometimes wonder why he invents characters who do not exist and makes them do things which do not matter, so a philosopher may wonder why he invents cases that cannot occur in o...
It seems people spend the majority of their lives believing they're dying, with the only consolation being that at one point they get to be right.
I was thinking that a life is just the history of what we give our attention to,’ said Patrick. ‘The rest is packaging.
I just have to get rid of this piece of glass,' said Anne. 'I guess something broke here earlier?''It was me,' said Patrick.
Eleanor had watched her mother’s persecution with the same vivid silence as she experienced in the face of her own gradual disintegration tonight.
Could one have a time-release epiphany, an epiphany without realizing it had happened? Or were they always trumpeted by angels and preceded by temporary blindness, Patrick wondered, as he walked down...
Anne came downstairs wearing a white cotton dress almost indistinguishable from the white cotton nightgown she had taken off.
Everything was usual. That was depression: being stuck, clinging to an out-of-date version of oneself.