The only reason for something to happen in a novel is that it’s the perfect thing to have happen at that time.
Three nights at the Hotel zum Storchen – a decent hotel”, Farrokh explained. “Your room overlooks the Limmat. You can walk in the old town, or to the lake. Have you ever been in Europe?
Technical Sergeant Garp, the late gunner whose familiarity with violent death cannot be exaggerated, served with the Eighth Air Force – the air force that bombed the Continent from England.
Since everything that is moved functions as a sort of instrument of the first mover, if there was no first mover, then whatever things are in motion would be simply instruments. Of course, if an infinite series of movers and things moved were possible, with no first mover, then the whole infinity of movers.
Now and forever,” Juan Diego said, more confidently. He knew this was a promise to himself – to seize every opportunity that looked like the future, from this moment forward.
I shared my grandmother’s distaste for the word rector – it sounded too much like rectum to be taken seriously.
As a self-described Guadalupe girl, Lupe was sensitive to Guadalupe being overshadowed by the “Mary Monster.” Lupe not only meant that Mary was the most dominant of the Catholic Church’s “stable” of virgins; Lupe believed that the Virgin Mary was also “a domineering virgin.
But Lupe both genuinely worshiped Our Lady of Guadalupe and fiercely doubted her; Lupe’s doubt was borne by the child’s judgmental sense that Guadalupe had submitted to the Virgin Mary – that Guadalupe was complicitous in allowing Mother Mary to be in control.
Garp was a natural storyteller; he could make things up, one right after the other, and they seemed to fit. But what did they mean?
Jack realized that when you’re happy – especially when it’s the first time in your life – you think of things that would never have occurred to you when you were unhappy.
Here come the characters who comprise the movie vermin, the Hollywood scum, the film slime – the aforementioned “unscrupulous cowards of mediocrity.” Fortunately, they are minor characters, yet so distasteful that their introduction has been delayed as long as possible.
Listen to me, Bill,” Richard said. “Let the librarian be your new best friend. If you like what she’s given you to read, trust her. The library, the theater, a passion for novels and plays – well, Bill, this could be the door to your future. At your age, I lived in a library! Now novels and plays are my life.
Don’t ever die,” Juan Diego had written to Brother Pepe from Iowa City. What Juan Diego meant was that HE would die if he lost Pepe.
Don’t grown-ups ever get over things?
An aura of fate had marked him. He moved slowly; he often appeared to be lost in thought, or in his imagination – as if his future were predetermined, and he wasn’t resisting it.
And you wouldn’t want to bring her home – at least not to entertain your guests or amuse the children. No, Juan Diego thought – you would want to keep her, all for yourself.
As a fourteen-year-old, he’d not been old enough to have sympathy for her – for either the child or the adult that she was.
Jenny felt that her education was merely a polite way to bide time, as if she were really a cow, being prepared only for the insertion of the device for artificial insemination. Her.
There weren’t so many transvestite prostitutes in Oaxaca in those days; Flor really stood out, and not only because she was tall. She was almost beautiful; what was beautiful about her truly wasn’t affected by the softest-looking trace of a mustache on her upper lip, though Lupe noticed it.
Lupe began to recite a list of reasons. “One: love of dogs,” she started. “Two: to be stars – in a circus, we might be famous. Three: because the parrot man will come visit us, and our future – ” She stopped for a second. “His future, anyway,” Lupe said, pointing to her brother. “His future is in the parrot man’s hands – I just know it is, circus or no circus.