Writing, it seems to me, is a secret act – as secret as dreaming – and that was one aspect of this strange and dangerous craft I had never thought about much.
Jeanette was in for manslaughter; on a winter night in 2005 she had stabbed her husband, Damian, in the groin with a clutchhead screwdriver and because he was high he’d just sat in an armchair and let himself bleed to death.
Mrs. Bradley’s explanation: to make an irrevocable decision. What he learned later, sometimes to his sorrow, is that one comes upon most Rubicons unprepared.
Wake up, genius.
The Golden Tits of America!” Jason Rapsis cried from the shotgun seat. Rob had worked with any number of paramedics over his fifteen years as an EMT, and Jace Rapsis was the best: easygoing when nothing was happening, unflappable and sharply focused when everything was happening at once. “We shall be fed! God bless capitalism! Pull in, pull in!
Tried to teach him The Lord’s Prayer once.” His eyes traveled out beyond the hut for a moment, toward the gritty, featureless hardpan. “Guess this ain’t Lord’s Prayer country.
The screams were too big to come out.
Why God would let it be this way. It’s a mystery? You’re the hotshot philosophy guy and that’s the best you can do?” Yes, because death brings philosophy to ruin, Doug thinks.
There are quests and roads that lead ever onward, and all of them end in the same place – upon the killing ground.
I am what ka and the King and the Tower have made me. We all are. We’re caught.
That afternoon I began expanding my notes.
For days it can be good, weeks, even, and then there’s something to swallow.
Things had stretched apart. There was no glue at the center anymore. Somewhere something was tottering, and when it fell, all would end.
There was an ocean above us, held in by a thin sac that might rupture and let down a flood at any second.
The timing was just right enough so that things worked out wrong for everyone.
I was in trouble, my life was a moderate-going-on-severe mess, and not being able to write was only part of it. I wasn’t raping kids or running around Times Square preaching conspiracy theories through a bullhorn, but I was in trouble just the same. I had lost my place in things and couldn’t find it again. No surprise there; after all, life’s not a book.
The penalty for overeagerness is the same as the penalty for unworthiness.
He felt that he had unwittingly stuck his hand into The Great Wasps’ Nest of Life.
These models – these mannequins – are perfectly professional, and he hates all professionalism. He is too young to have learned to hate himself yet, but that seed is already there; given time, it will grow, and bear bitter fruit. He.
Sorrow for a wrong was better than nothing, Barbie supposed, but no amount of after-the-fact sorrow could ever atone for joy taken in destruction, whether it was burning ants or shooting prisoners.