It was lousy in the park. It wasn’t too cold, but the sun still wasn’t out, and there didn’t look like there was anything in the park except dog crap and globs of spit and cigar butts from old men, and the benches all looked like they’d be wet if you sat down on them. It made you depressed, and every once in a while, for no reason, you got goose flesh while you walked. It didn’t seem at all like Christmas was coming soon. It didn’t seem like anything was coming.
He finished combing his goddamn gorgeous hair.
If you’re a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you’re supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything.
That’s what makes me so mad! I could just spit! It’s like being in a lunatic asylum and having another patient all dressed up as a doctor come over to you and start taking your pulse or something...
That’s hard to say, Sybil. She may be in any one of a thousand places.
Eight dollars and eighty-five cents. Sixty-five cents. I spent some.
Act, Zachary Martin Glass, when and where you want to, since you feel you must, but do it with all your might. If you do anything at all beautiful on a stage, anything nameless and joy-making, anything above and beyond the call of theatrical ingenuity, S. and I will both rent tuxedos and rhinestone hats and solemnly come around to the stage door with bouquets of snapdragons.
But her arms were probably the best of her. They were brown and round and good.
Yes, I have an ulcer, for Chrissake. This is Kaliyuga, buddy, the Iron Age. Anybody over sixteen without an ulcer’s a goddam spy.
I don’t like it when it stings,′ he said. ‘Nobody does.
Piled on top of all this good fortune, what else does one find? A capacity to make many wonderful friends in small numbers whom we will love passionately and guard from uninstructive harm until our lives are finished and who, in turn, will love us, too, and never let us down without very great regret, which is a lot better, more guerdoning, more humorous than being let down without any regret at all.
While I have no confidence whatsoever in go-betweens, personal opinion, and unassailable, respectable facts, I am also, in my heart, exceedingly fond of them all; I am hopelessly touched to the quick at the bravery of every magnificent human being accepting this charming, flimsy information every heartrending moment of his life! My God, human beings are brave creatures! Every last, touching coward on the face of the earth is unspeakably brave!
I can very clearly see you dying nobly, one way or another, for some highly unworthy cause.
One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies.
The reason he fixed himself up to look good was because he was madly in love with himself.
Among other things you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused or frightened and even sickened by human behavior. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them – if you want to, just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you.
I didn’t care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn’t know me and I didn’t know anybody. I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn’t have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they’d have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They’d get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I’d be through with having conversations for the rest of my life.
You dirty little bookworm.
Look, sir. Don’t worry about me,′ I said. ‘I mean it. I’ll be all right. I’m just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don’t they?
The only thing that counts in the religious life is detachment.