Leonora Penderton feared neither man, beast, nor the devil; God she had never known.
The love she felt was so hard that she had to squeeze him to her until her arms were tired.
The loneliness in him was so keen that he was filled with terror. Usually he had a pint of bootleg white lightning. He drank the raw liquor and by daylight he was warm and relaxed.
Singer never knew just how much his friend understood of all the things he told him. But it did not matter.
With her it was like there was two places – the inside room and the outside room.
April that year came sudden and still, and the green of the trees was a wild bright green. The pale wistarias bloomed all over town, and silently the blossoms shattered. There was something about the green trees and the flowers of April that made Frankie sad. She did not know why she was sad, but because of this peculiar sadness, she began to realize she ought to leave the town.
For we were thinking of freedom. That’s the word like a worm in my brain. Yes? No? How much? How little? The word is a signal for piracy and theft and cunning. We’ll be free and the smartest will then be able to enslave the others. But! But there is another meaning to the word. Of all words this one is the most dangerous. We who know must be wary. The word makes us feel good – in fact the word is a great ideal. But it’s with this ideal that the spiders spin their ugliest webs for us.
I go all around and try to tell them. And they laugh. I can’t make them understand anything. No matter what I say I can’t seem to make them see the truth.
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.