Once a Garp, then an Arp, now only an Ar; she knew he was dying. He had just one vowel and one consonant left.
Nostalgia! Miss Frost cried. You´re nostalgic! She repeated. Just how old are you, William? She asked.Seventeen, I told her.Seventeen! Miss Frost cried, as if she'd been stabbed. Well, William Abbott...
No one could have fathomed what a life he'd led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.
Motherfucking Christ, Gerry said to me on that Christmas Day, 1960. Isn’t it perfectly possible that Nils and his wife are too depressed to have kids? The prospect of having kids depresses the shit ou...
Lupe’s language was incomprehensible—what came out of her mouth didn’t even sound like Spanish.
It was in looking at sea gulls that it first occurred to Homer Wells that he was free.
It seemed to Dr. Daruwalla that his story was the opposite of universal; his story was simply strange - the doctor himself was singularly foreign.
In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us -- not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.
If you want to worry about something, you ought to worry about how Guadalupe was looking at you. Like she’s still making up her mind about you. Guadalupe hasn’t decided about you, the clairvoyant chil...
I try to see the whole woman,' Eddie said to Hannah. 'Of course I recognize that she's old, but there are photographs - or the equivalent of photographs in one's imagination of anyone's life. A whole...
I think that was when the headmaster realized he had lost; he realized then that he was finished. Because, what could he do? Was he going to tell us to stop praying? We kept our heads bowed; and we ke...
It was a feeling with nowhere to go. Was that what love was, and how it came to you--leaving you no options for its use?
Never spoke of it. He took the miracle to his grave. All Andrew ever said about the voyage was that a nun had taught him how to play mah-jongg. Something must have happened during one of their games.
That was the night he got up and went to the boys' division; perhaps he was looking for his history in the big room where all the boys slept, but what he found instead was Dr. Larch kissing every boy...
She drew the line at television. It took no effort to watch – it was infinitely more beneficial to the soul, and to the intelligence, to read or to listen – and what she imagined there was on TV appal...
Most self-destructive behavior is simply ridiculous—never mind how complexly compelled by personal demons.
Most dump kids are believers; maybe you have to believe in something when you see so many discarded things.
Moreover, there was what Amy called the cocksuckers’ contingent of the country—what Danny knew as the dumber-than-dog-shit element, those bully patriots—and they were too set in their ways or too poor...
Look at the world: look at how many of our peerless leaders presume to tell us that they know what God wants! It’s not God who’s fucked up, it’s the screamers who say they believe in Him and who claim...
It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived.