The temptation of the old, born into the middle of things, was to see in their deaths the end of everything, the end of times. That way their deaths made more sense.
Her cleverness, her love and knowledge of music, literature, her liveliness and charm when he was securely hers masked her desperation.
Wasted time in beautiful places, lingering joyfully just inside the gates of paradise with the world’s colours aflame, always regretting the setting sun and the call home, the Edenic expulsion into the next day and its usual concerns.
What must it be, to burst out of deep infant sleep into the shocking singular fact of existence.
Nothing is so dishonourable in a civilised nation as to permit itself to be ‘governed’ without resistance by a reckless clique that has surrendered to depraved instinct.
There are some decisions, even moral ones, that are formed in regions below conscious thought.
She was not in pain, not yet, but she was retreating before its threat.
It bore her no malice, this animal, it was indifferent to her misery. It would move as a cage panther might: because it is awake, out of boredom, for the sake of movement itself, or for no reason at all, and with no awareness.
He suspected he had brushed against a fundamental law of the universe: such ecstasy must compromise his freedom. That was its price.
It was either hilarious or it was tragic, that people should go about their daily business in the conventional way when they knew there was this.
The years slid over old deaths like a heavy lid. Nearly everything that happens to you in life you forget. Should have kept a journal.
The sound of crickets, the feel of warm dried grass on the soles of his feet and the scent of baked earth pleased him. The big thick glass was icy in his hands. When he set it down, the tinkle of the ice cubes sounded personal.
And these are only the ones I happen to know about. As soon as you discover you’re not the best, you throw it in and hate yourself. Same with relationships. You want too much and move on.
Such a fantasy of miscegenation could be a form of racism or simple adoration, but either way he was in no mood to banish it.
How would that constitute an ending? What service or hope or satisfaction could a reader draw from such an account? Who would want to believe that, except in the service of the bleakest realism? I couldn’t do it to them. I’m too old, too frightened, too much in love with the shred of the life I have remaining. I no longer possess the lavage of my pessimism. When I am dead, and the Marshall’s are dead, we will exist as my inventions.
The self-made hell was an interesting construct. Nobody escaped making one, at least one, in a lifetime. Some lives were nothing but. It was a tautology that self-inflicted misery was an extension of character.
The Greeks were right to invent their gods as argumentative unpredictable punitive members of a lofty elite. If he could believe in such all-too-human gods they would be the ones to fear. 4 In the third week after Alissa’s disappearance Roland set about imposing order on the overstuffed bookshelves around the table just off the kitchen.
And so the dead might cease to grieve And we might make amends And there might be a pact between Dead friends and living friends.
Our age could devise a passable replica of a human mind, but there was no one in our neighbourhood to fix a sash window, though a few had tried.
For speechless helpless humans, much power lay in a violent switch of extreme emotions. A crude mode of tyranny. Real-world tyrants were often compared to infants.