The north smells different from the city: clearer, thinner. You can see farther. A sawmill, a hill of sawdust, the teepee shape of a sawdust burner; the smokestacks of the copper smelters, the rocks around them bare of trees, burnt-looking, the heaps of blackened slag: I’ve forgotten about these things all winter, but here they are again, and when I see them I remember them, I know them, I greet them as if they are home.
I should have married Constance,” he says. That’s his ace: plonk! Right down on the table. Those five words are usually very effective: he might score a barrage of hostility, and maybe even some tears.
I’ve forgotten about these things all winter, but here they are again, and when I see them I remember them, I know them, I greet them as if they are home.
Who invented the word love?
I’ve described our life as peaceful, and to the outward eye it was; but there were inner storms and turmoils that I have since come to learn are not uncommon among those seeking to dedicate themselves to a higher cause.
Nothing should be carelessly thrown away, not even wine from sinful places. There was no such thing as garbage, trash, or dirt, only matter that hadn’t been put to a proper use.
Some women had nightmares, as you’d assume. They would groan and thrash about during them, or sit bolt upright with modified shouts. I’m not criticizing: I had nightmares myself. Shall I describe one for you? No, I will not. I’m fully aware of how easily one can become fatigued by other people’s nightmares, having heard a number of recitals of these by now. When push comes to shove, only one’s own nightmares are of any interest or significance.
However she tried to hide it, she resented me, of course. There’s only so long you can feel sorry for a person before you come to feel that their affliction is an act of malice committed by them against you.
I took care not to react. It’s a skill, not reacting.
Then they’d brought in some top designers to consult on an overall look and feel. The fifties was chosen for the visual and audio aspects, because that was the decade in which the most people had self-identified as being happy. Which is one of the goals here: maximum possible happiness. Who wouldn’t tick that box?
The Serpent is wise in that it lives in immediacy, without the need for the elaborate intellectual frameworks Humankind is.
I meant it for the best, or for the best available, which is not the same thing.
I remain deeply grateful that I have never learned to knit.
In the gap between desire and enactment, noun and verb, intention and infliction, want and have, compassion begins.
I’d felt like crying, but cry once and it’s all over: if you cry, the reliable men will despise you, and then they will not be reliable any more.
What he craved was not her body as such. He wanted to be transformed by her, into someone he was not.
Right now I’m not afraid of him. It’s hard to be afraid of a man who is sitting watching you put on hand lotion. This lack of fear is dangerous.
In any case, time is not a thing that passes, said Pilar: it’s a sea on which you float.
Sk my dk, it’s organic!
Axiom: that illness isn’t productive. In itself, it generates no commodities and therefore no money. Although it’s an excuse for a lot of activity, all it really does moneywise is cause wealth to flow from the sick to the well. From patients to doctors, from clients to cure-peddlers. Money osmosis, you might call it.