On the front porch where she had come to weigh them quietly with her eyes, her quietness a condemnation, the woman stood motionless.
He had seen her painted sign by the road: Skin Illustration! Illustration instead of tattoo! Artistic!
There it sat, perfect as a fresh-laid egg on the dead sea bottom, the only nucleus of light and warmth in hundreds of miles of lonely wasteland. It was like a heart beating alone in a great dark body. He felt almost sorrowful with pride, gazing at it with wet eyes.
I remember the newspapers dying like huge moths. No one wanted them back. No one missed them.
It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed.
No fantasy, no reality. No studies concerning loss, no gain. No imagination, no will. No impossible dreams: No possible solutions.
She didn’t want to know how a thing was done, but why.
Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?
There are so many real people around, telling children what and how to do, that a boy has to run off down a beach, even if it’s only in his head, to get by himself in his own world.
How long has it been since you wrote a story where your real love or real hatred somehow got onto the paper? When was the last time you dared release a cherished prejudice so it slammed the page like a lightning bolt? What are the best things and the worst things in your life, and when are you going to get around to whispering or shouting them?
Women never wake then, do they? They sleep the sleep of babes and children.
Everywhere you look in the literary cosmos, the great ones are busy loving and hating.
The cat came first, in order to be absolute first. It arrived when all the cribs and closets and cellar bins and attic hang-spaces still needed October wings, autumn breathings, and fiery eyes.
Like a fall of timber he chopped himself to bed.
In your life, did you know enthusiasm?′ If the answer is yes you enter the sky. If no, you fall to burn in the pit.
Once in a lifetime anyway, it’s nice to make a mistake if you think it’ll do somebody some good,” she.
Do you remember what happened to Mexico when Cortez and his very fine good friends arrived from Spain? A whole civilization destroyed by greedy, righteous bigots. History will never forgive Cortez.
The bombers crossed the sky and crossed the sky over the house, gasping, murmuring, whistling like an immense, invisible fan, circling in emptiness.
You don’t ask a dream if it is real, or you wake up.
Sapete che i libri hanno un po’l’odore della noce moscata o di certe spezie d’origine esotica? Amavo annusarli, da ragazzo. Signore, quanti bei libri c’erano al mondo un tempo, prima che noi vi rinunciassimo!