He was not a monster, to her... How easy to invent a humanity, for anyone at all.
I love you. You’re the only one.” She isn’t the first woman he’s ever said that to. He shouldn’t have used it up so much earlier in his life, he shouldn’t have treated it like a tool, a wedge, a key to open women. By the time he got around to meaning it, the words had sounded fraudulent to him and he’d been ashamed to pronounce them.
How soon before there are ancient texts they feel they have to obey but have forgotten how to interpret?
Everything that went on in your life was thought to be due to some positive or negative power emanating from inside your head.
Fool, he tells himself. She’s not here. She was never here. It was imagination and wishful thinking, nothing but that. Resign yourself. He can’t resign himself.
But in an account such as this, it is better to be scrupulous about your faults, as about all your other actions. Otherwise no one will understand why you made the decisions that you made.
But we own nothing they want, so we don’t qualify as terrorists.
The written word is so much like evidence – like something that can be used against you later.
We would not be Human if we did not prefer to be the devourers rather than the devoured, but either is a blessing. Should your life be required of you, rest assured that it is required by Life.
Then I find I’m not ashamed after all. I enjoy the power; power of a dog bone, passive but there.
You should never let your picture be in a magazine or newspaper if you can help it, as you never know what ends your face may be made to serve, by others, once it has got out of your control.
Language itself had lost its solidity; it had become thin, contingent, slippery, a viscid film on which he was sliding around like an eyeball on a plate. An eyeball that could still see, however. That was the trouble.
When the slugs begin to talk there’s no time to lose.
I want anything that breaks the monotony, subverts the perceived respectable order of things.
A bird of the air will carry the voice.
Does naming a sphere of nothingness transmute it into being?
We do like to have such good opinions of our own motives when we’re about to do something harmful, to someone else. But as Mr. Erskine also pointed out, Eros with his bow and arrows is not the only blind god. Justitia is the other one. Clumsy blind gods with edged weapons: Justicia totes a sword, which, coupled with her blindfold, is a pretty good recipe for cutting yourself.
Do you think anyone will believe it?” Aunt Elizabeth asked. “They will believe whatever is in the best interests of Ardua Hall,” I said firmly. “Which is the same as their own best interests.
Innocent men denying their guilt sound exactly like guilty men, as I am sure you have noticed, my reader. Listeners are inclined to believe neither.
Yes, they know her. They touch her lips, gather her words, fly away with the message, disappear into the dark. Pass through the membrane that separates this world from the unseen world that lies just underneath it.