He had been shot through the head with a .32 caliber pistol and he was twenty-one years old forever.
Schopenhauer says somewhere that if the entire universe should vanish the only thing left would be music.
Sheddan once said that evil has no alternate plan. It is simply incapable of assuming failure.
They ate on in silence, jaws working all down the table with great sobriety, all sitting upright and formal saving the toothless old woman who bent nearsightedly into her plate with smacking gums, a sparse tuft of long white chin hairs wagging and drifting above the food.
We’re all of us pretty much an assemblage of memories.
If there is an afterlife – and I pray most fervently that there is not – I can only hope that they wont sing.
If we should meet again I hope there will be something in the way of a wateringhole where I can stand you a round. Perhaps show you about the place. Look for a tall and somewhat raffish looking chap in a tailored robe.
I can only assume that fresh demons have materialized out of your troubled karma.
The old man opened his hands and closed them again. A gesture of accommodation. Not quite a blessing. He nodded toward the glass case where half a dozen old Colt revolvers lay displayed, some nickelplated, some with grips of staghorn. One with old worn grips of guttapercha, one with the front sight filed away. All of them belonged to somebody’s grandfather, he said.
I’ve studied much and learned little.
They watched him go. Neither spoke for there was nothing to say.
She’s a better person than me, which I will admit to anybody that cares to listen. Not that that’s sayin a whole lot. She’s a better person than anybody I know. Period.
War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him.
The roar of the pistol in his face chopped it off and the size of the silence that followed was enormous.
A halfman on a skatecart oared past with leather chocks.
I didnt know you were a bird watcher. I’m not. I’m a forever watcher.
In the morning he sat with his feet crossed under him and watched the sun rise. It sat swagged and red in the smoke like a matrix of molten iron swung wobbling up out of a furnace.
If a cell can be lefthanded may it not have a will? And a gauche will?
Before we mire up too deep in the accusatory voice it might be well to remind ourselves that you can’t misrepresent what has yet to occur.
The streetlamps stood in globes of vapor and the buildings were dark and sweating. At times the city seemed older than Nineveh.