The vending machines hummed softly, as though mulling over some grave decision...
The cataract of grief is a longer drop than Niagara, and I guess I’ve not reached the river of acceptance at the bottom.
We are coming now to dark shoals in rough waters, to straits so narrow that virtue and wickedness voyage close together and may be at times more difficult than usual to differentiate from each other.
A truly nice smile combined with self-control can take a person a long way.
No one can genuinely love the world, which is too large to love entire. To love all the world at once is pretense or dangerous self-delusion. Loving the world is like loving the idea of love, which is perilous because, feeling virtuous about this grand affection, you are freed from the struggles and the duties that come with loving people as individuals, with loving one place – home – above all others.
At times like this, tears exorcise emotions that would otherwise haunt me and, by their haunting, embitter me.
The writer that you are, I guess you’re used to being a kind of dictator, telling the characters in your stories what to do.
Although Grandpa never put it in words for me, one thing I learned from him was that being admired gives you more power than being feared.
No standards anymore. Now Ricky he watches all them old Disney and Warner Brothers toons on DVD. You never have to worry if maybe Bugs Bunny is goin’ to get it on with Daffy Duck.
I’m not unique, Chyna. The world is filled with the likes of me – most are just less free. You know where I think a lot of my type wind up?’ In spite of herself, she asked, ‘Where?’ ‘In politics.
The wall clock and her wristwatch had stopped, their sweep hands no longer wiping away the seconds, and the digital clock on the microwave had gone dark, as if something that lived outside of time had stepped into this world and brought its clockless ambiance with it.
Is this the sunniest of sunny days or isn’t it?” “What?” “You’ve got eyes, child. Look around, look around!” “Sure, it’s sunny.” “Then you be sunny, too, and things will turn out better than if you aren’t.
The doll twitched. Its head turned slightly toward Tommy. Its green eye fixed on him.
When steel sagged, when clothes grew moth-eaten on haberdashery racks, when cars rusted on showroom floors for want of customers, the film industry nevertheless flourished. In bad times as in good, the only two absolute necessities were food and illusions.
He knows the legend of the Wandering Jew who struck Christ on the day of the crucifixion and was then condemned to roam the world forever without rest. Some say this condemnation was in fact an act of grace because the devil can’t find and take a man whose remorse drives him to wander ceaselessly in search of absolution.
Death is part of life. If you think about it, you were born into a world populated by the dead, because.
When she realized that the tears might be as persistent as the shakes, she ran for the only medicine that reliably cured any bout of unpleasant feelings: a book. Although.
Then she looked into the shepherd’s eyes and saw what is to be seen in every dog’s eyes if it has not been broken by a cruel master: trust, strength without arrogance, a desire to give and receive affection – and an honesty so pure that deception, if contemplated, cannot be perpetrated.
I’ve been badly scared myself, badly, for quite a few years now. You learn to live with it.
This fair world, compounded of uncountable beauties and enchantments and graces, inspired in me only one abiding fear, which was that I might live in it too long.