They made us participate in their own madness,because we couldn't help but retrace their steps, rethink their thoughts, and see that none of them led to us.
He didn't understand how she had bewitched him, nor why having done so she promptly forgot his existence, and in desperate moods he asked his mirror why the only girl he was crazy about was the only g...
Given the choice, a yeast cell's ideal state is to be diploid. But if it's in an environment with a lack of nutrients, you know what happens?The diploids break into haploids again. Solitary little hap...
For the eternity that Lux Lisbon looked at him, Trip Fontaine looked back, and the love he felt at that moment, truer than all subsequent loves because it never had to survive real life, still plagued...
Find the Bad Guy means how, when you’re arguing with your spouse, both people are trying to win the argument. Who didn’t close the garage door? Who left the Bigfoot hair clump in the shower drain? Wha...
But in 1922 it was still a new thing to be a machine.
At that moment Mr. Lisbon had the feeling that he didn't know who she was, that children were only strangers you agreed to live with, and he reached out in order to meet her for the first time.
As much as he hated his lithium, here it was his friend. Leonard could feel the huge tide of sadness waiting to rush over him. But there was an invisible barrier keeping the full reality of it from to...
As he responded to the essay questions, Mitchell kept bending his answers toward their practical application. He wanted to know why he was here, and how to live. It was the perfect way to end your col...
And yet sometimes she worried about those musty old books were doing to her. Some people majored in English to prepare for law school. Others became journalists.
And so it began. He played Begin the Beguine against Tessie’s collarbone. He played Moonface against her smooth cheeks. Pressing the clarinet right up against the red toenails that had so dazzled him,...
But this is all chasing after the wind. The essence of the suicides consisted not of sadness or mystery but simple selfishness. The girls took into their own hands decisions better left to God. They b...
You never get over it, but you get to where it doesn't bother you so much.
When you stood between somebody you loved and death, it was hard to be awake and it was hard to sleep.
When she smiled, her mouth showed too many teeth, but at night Trip Fontaine dreamed of being bitten by each one.
They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked higher...
The window gave onto a view of dove-gray roofs and balconies, each one containing the same cracked flowerpot and sleeping feline. It was as if the entire city of Paris had agreed to abide by a single...
The Lisbon girls were thirteen (Cecelia), and fourteen (Lux), and fifteen (Bonnie), and sixteen (Mary), and seventeen (Therese).
Something sick at the heart of the country had infected the girls. Our parents thought it had to do with our music, our godlessness, or the loosening of morals regarding sex we hadn't even had.
People don't save other people. People save themselves.