It all happened in a second. The three of them reached Baby at the same time. She lay crumpled down on the dirty sidewalk. Her skirt was over her head, showing her pink panties and her little white legs. Her hands were open – in one there was the prize from the candy and in the other the pocketbook. There was blood all over her hair ribbon and the top of her yellow curls. She was shot in the head and her face was turned down toward the ground.
He could not understand the wild quiver of his heart, nor the following sense of recklessness and grace that lingered after she was gone.
He was thinking that in nearly every person there was some special physical part kept always guarded.
Again, the terror, the acknowledgment of wasted years and death. Valentin, responsive and confident, still nestled in his arms. His cheek touched the soft cheek and felt the brush of the delicate eyelashes. With inner desperation he pressed the child close – as though an emotion as protean as his love could dominate the pulse of time.
It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being be loved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.
What did he understand? Nothing. Where was he headed? Nowhere. What did he want? To know. What? A meaning. Why? A riddle.
The Captain swallowed his capsules and lay down in the dark with pleasant anticipation. This quantity of the drug gave him a unique and voluptuous sensation; it was as though a great dark bird alighted on his chest, looked at him once with fierce, golden eyes, and stealthily enfolded him in his dark wings.
For forty years his mission was his life and his life was his mission. And yet all remained to be done and nothing was completed.
She belonged to no club and was a member of nothing in the world.
During these weeks there was a quality about Miss Amelia that many people noticed. She laughed often, with a deep ringing laugh, and her whistling had a sassy, tunefull trickery. She was forever trying out her strength, lifting up heavy objects or poking her tough biceps with her finger.
The three of them sat at the kitchen table, saying the same things over and over, so that by August the words began to rhyme with each other and sound strange.
Each day was very much like any other day, because they were alone so much that nothing ever disturbed them.
An army post in peacetime is a dull place. Things happen, but then they happen over and over again.
Then when he had washed the ashtray and the glass he brought out a pistol from his pocket and put a bullet in his chest.
It looks to me like everything has just walked off and left me.
Being mad is no good. Nothing we can do is any good. That’s the way it seems to me. All we can do is go around telling the truth.
Frances wanted the whole world to die.
German lieder is creepy music. That’s why I specialize in it.
Afterward the Captain was to tell himself that in this one instant he knew everything. Actually, in a moment when a great but unknown shock is expected, the mind instinctively prepares itself by abandoning momentarily the faculty of surprise. In that vulnerable instant a kaleidoscope of half-guessed possibilities project themselves, and when the disaster has defined itself there is the feeling of having understood beforehand in some supernatural way.
Man does not make these natural resources – man only develops them, only uses them for work... How can a man own ground and space and sunlight and rain for crops?