If only I could have nourished myself upon the depths of his vulgarity, instead of that too becoming a source of shame. Shame and shame and shame and shame – every place I turn something else to be ashamed of.
It is Jerry’s theory that the Swede is nice, that is to say passive, that is to say trying always to do the right thing, a socially controlled character who doesn’t burst out, doesn’t yield to rage ever. Will not have the angry quality as his liability, so doesn’t get it as an asset either. According to this theory, it’s the no-rage that kills him in the end. Whereas aggression is cleansing or curing.
Simple was never that simple. Still, the self-questioning did take some time to reach him. And if there’s anything worse than self-questioning coming too early in life, it’s self-questioning coming too late.
There is no protest to be lodged against loneliness – not all the bombing campaigns in history have made a dent in it.
Yes, alone we are, deeply alone, and always, in store for us, a layer of loneliness even deeper. There is nothing we can do to dispose of that. No, loneliness shouldn’t surprise us, as astonishing to experience as it may be. You can try turning yourself inside out, but all you are then is inside out and lonely instead of inside in and lonely.
There is no protest to be lodged against loneliness – not all the bombing campaigns in history have made a dent in it. The most lethal of manmade explosives can’t touch it. Stand in awe not of Communism, my idiot child, but of ordinary, everyday loneliness.
This man did not deal in fairy tales. You could see that as soon as you walked into his office. Schevitz was somebody who liked to be proved right, somebody whose wish to prevail was his vocation.
The music I play after dinner is not a relief from the silence but something like its substantiation: listening to music for an hour or two every evening doesn’t deprive me of the silence – the music is the silence coming true.
The most lethal of manmade explosives can’t touch it. Stand in awe not of Communism, my idiot child, but of ordinary, everyday loneliness. On May Day go out and march with your friends to its greater glory, the superpower of superpowers.
No one gets through unmarked by brooding, grief, confusion, and loss. Even those who had it all as kids sooner or later get the average share of misery, if not sometimes more.
I’m not in the business. ‘Liking people’ is often just another racket.
Anyone with brains understands that he is destined to lead a stupid life because there is no other kind.
Clothes are a masquerade anyway. When you go outside and see everyone in clothes, then you know for sure that nobody has a clue to why he was born and that, aware of it or not, people are perpetually performing in a dream.
What was astonishing to him was how people seemed to run out of their own being, run out of whatever the stuff was that made them who they were and, drained of themselves, turn into the sort of people they would once have felt sorry for.
Don’t be against yourself. There’s enough cruelty in the world as it is. Don’t make things worse by scapegoating yourself.
Three generations. All of them growing. The working. The saving. The success. Three generations in raptures over America. Three generations of becoming one with a people. And now with the fourth it had all come to nothing. The total vandalization of their world.
Everything you say says either more than you wanted it to say or less than you wanted it to say; and everything you do does either more than you wanted it to do or less than you wanted it to do. What you said and did made a difference, all right, but not the difference you intended.
He was trying hard to continue to exist as himself despite the unlikeliness of everything.
There’s a plot afoot all right, and I’ll gladly name the forces propelling it – hysteria, ignorance, malice, stupidity, hatred, and fear.
They were still talking about polio, now by recalling its frightening precursors. His grandmother was remembering when whooping cough victims were required to wear armbands and how, before a vaccine was developed, the most dreaded disease in the city was diphtheria. She remembered getting one of the first smallpox vaccinations. The site of the injection had become seriously infected, and she had a large, uneven circle of scarred flesh on her upper right arm as a result.