Mr. Robertson Davies has also suggested in his Deptford Trilogy that the same great truism which applies to writing, painting, picking horses at the track, and telling lies in a sincerely believable way, also applies to magic: some people got the knack, and some people don’t. Hilly didn’t.
Readers have a loyalty that cannot be matched anywhere else in the creative arts.
The crowd could not know that they were cheering but somehow they did, somehow they understood that the circle between death-worship and death-wish had been completed for another year and the crowd went completely loopy, convulsing itself in greater and greater paroxysms.
The refrigerator whirred, the water dripped in the sink, and the raw seconds passed. This was the Darker Life, where every truth was written backward.
I don’t want Church to be like all those dead pets! she burst out, suddenly tearful and furious. I don’t want Church to ever be dead! He’s my cat! He’s not God’s cat! Let God have all the damn old cats He wants, and kill them all! Church is mine!
Good! he wanted to cry out to her. Good! Because you only had to see it! I had to wear it!
Purpurfargade ansiktet.
The woman who preaches has poison religion. Let the respectable ones go.
Bill could smell Its breath and it was a smell like exploded animals lying on the highway at midnight.
She looked from her son to Bill and back to her son again, touched by wonder that was mostly simple perplexity but partly a fear so thin and sharp that it found its way deep into her inner heart and vibrated there like a tuning-fork made of clear ice.
So exquisitely slopped that he didn’t know if he was on land or at sea.
But let me tell you something, Harrigan – sooner or later City Hall is gonna catch up to your action, and they’re gonna render unto your scofflaw holy-rollin’ ass. I only hope I’m there when it happens.
Better to be a mouse behind the wainscoting, nibbling at the wires. Better to be a spider, high up under the eaves, spinning its web.
You didn’t want to call your boyfriend Buddy, but when reverting to his real name meant Bruce, it left you with no real ground to stand on.
During the fifth inning, something came to the edge of the woods and looked at her. Flies and noseeums made a cloud around its rudiment of a face. In the specious brilliance of its eyes was a complete history of nothing. It stood there for a long time.
And no matter how much I want to encourage the man or woman trying for the first time to write seriously, I can’t lie and say there are no bad writers. Sorry, but there are lots of bad writers.
Soft and sweet and mellow, the song came back and lingered, following her down into a deeper sleep where thought ceased and the faces that came in dreams went unremembered.
The world turns, that’s all. You can hold on and turn with it, or stand up to protest and be spun right off.
I suppose it doesn’t matter much. A lot of things don’t matter, but it doesn’t keep a man from wondering about them, I’ve noticed.
Life is short and pain is long and we were all put on this earth to help each other.