There was a pot of boiling rage on a private stove behind their closed curtains:
There is so much beautiful in the world if you look around. You are looking only at the dirt under your feet, Jimmy. It’s not good for you.
There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate
There is indeed something delightful about being able to combine obedience and disobedience in the same act.
There is a silence. But sometimes it’s as dangerous not to speak.
There has to be an us because now there is them.
There are things I need to ask her. Not what happened, back then in the time I lost, because now I know that. I need to ask her why. If she remembers. Perhaps she’s forgotten the bad things, what she...
There are days when I can hardly make it out of bed. I find it an effort to speak. I measure progress in steps, the next one and the next one, as far as the bathroom. These steps are major accomplishm...
Then the Alumni Association man cleared his throat and gave out with a pious spiel about Winifred Griffen Prior, saint on earth. How everyone fibs when it’s a question of money! I suppose the old bitc...
The young ones are often the most dangerous, the most fanatical, the jumpiest with their guns. They haven't yet learned about existence through time.
So this was the rest of his life. It felt like a party to which he'd been invited, but at an address he couldn't actually locate. Someone must be having fun at it, this life of his; only, right at the...
She must have heard the door opening and closing in the middle of the night; she produces a smile, warm, conspiratorial, and I know what circuits are closing in her head: by screwing Joe she's brought...
She longs for tonight, she longs to skip the day that’s just begun and plunge headlong into the night as if into a pool; a pool with the moon reflected in it. She longs to swim in liquid moonlight.
She gives him an LED smile: light, but no heat.
Placidity and order and everything in its place, with a decorous and sanctioned violence going on underneath everything, like a heavy, brutal shoe tapping out the rhythm on a carpeted floor.
Of course you have always been an idealist, and filled with your optimistic dreams; but reality must at some time obtrude, and you are now turned thirty.
Now I can see how that can happen. You can fall in love with anybody — a fool, a criminal, a nothing. There are no good rules.
None of them was willing to be a girl, he said. You can see why not.I know, right? I don't blame them, she said with a hard edge to her voice. Being a girl is the pits, trust me.
Mouth to mouthI'm bringing you back to life.Why did you drown like thatwithout telling?What numbed you? Whatrose over your headwas gradual and onlyeverybody's air,standard & killing.Your head floats o...
More recently, some of us have been able to infiltrate the new ethereal-wave system that now encircles the globe, and to travel around that way, looking out at the world through the flat, illuminated...