The greater involution and deeper patina of her left tooth in comparison to the right, the skeptical cast
See you in the funny papers, he said. Jaunty, he reminded himself; always jaunty. In my panache is their hope for salvation.
One of the fundamental axioms of masculine self-regard is that the tools and appurtenances of a man's life must be containable within the pockets of his jacket and pants. Wallet, keys, gum, show or ba...
On a clear night in blacked-out countryside, in between bomber runs, when the tracer fire ceased and the searchlights went dark, the stars did not fill the sky so much as coat it like hoarfrost on a w...
ONE OF THE STURDIEST PRECEPTS of the study of human delusion is that every golden age is either past or in the offing. The months preceding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor offer a rare exception t...
Not only would I never want to belong to any club that would have me for a member--if elected I would wear street shoes onto the squash court and set fire to the ballroom curtains.
Never worry about what you're escaping from, he said. Worry about what you're escaping to.
Nel 1939, il giornale a fumetti americano, come i castori e gli scarafaggi della preistoria, era più grande e, voluminoso com'era, più ricco dei suoi moderni discendenti. Aspirava alle dimensioni di u...
Naomi was a tough kid, so much tougher than Landsman ever needed to be. She was two years younger, close enough for everything Landsman did or said to constitute a mark that must be surpassed or a the...
Most of the questions people asked you, he felt, were there to fill up dead space, curtail your movements, divert your energy and attention. Anyway, my grandfather and his emotions were never really o...
Love is like falconry, he said. Don't you think that's true, Cleveland?Never say love is like anything. said Cleveland. It isn't.
Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction, and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed.
Like everyone else in the show, Max avoided the Ogre, despising him as the lowest of the freaks, until one fateful night when his insomnia was eased by an unexpected strain of Mendelssohn that came wa...
It's always been hard for me to tell the difference between denial and what used to be known as hope.
I understand, he said. Please let me know. He meant it to sound patient and cooperative, but somehow it came out as abject. Rosa started to laugh. She put her arms around him, and he rubbed the smeare...
I thought you seemed like someone who might enjoy backgammon, said the kid, gravely mistaken.
I searched my feelings, an activity never far removed from looking for a dead rat in a spidery crawl space under the house.
I resign, says Velvel. He takes off his glasses, slips them into his pocket, and stands up. He forgot an appointment. He's late for work. His mother is calling him on the ultrasonic frequency reserved...
I like the way she dances. She shows a heavy Pharaonic influence, I'd say, in the elbows. With perhaps just a soupçon of Snoopy in the feet.
I knew that I shouldn’t have, but I did it all the same; and there you have my epitaph, or one of them, because my grave is going to require a monument inscribed on all four sides with rueful mottoes,...