Driving is the only means of transportation that is not fully regulated by federal law. As a result, all the operators are amateurs. Many of these amateurs are suicidal.
Because the past isn’t just obdurate; it’s in harmony with both itself and the future. I experienced that harmony time and again.
Once Tim asked his father what civilized meant. “Taxes,” Big Ross said, and laughed –.
Something that sounded like an insect droned past Ralph’s ear. He had an idea it was a .45-caliber bug. Better hurry up, sweetheart, Carolyn advised. When bullets hit you on this level they kill you, remember?
You can if things until you go crazy, my girl.
An old man told me about how his wife had heard voices speaking to her from the drain of her kitchen sink in the three weeks before their daughter died – that was in the early winter of 1957–58.
Do you know the phrase watershed moment, buddy?” I nodded. You didn’t have to be an English teacher to know that one; you didn’t even have to be literate. It was one of those annoying linguistic shortcuts that show up on cable TV news shows, day in and day out. Others include connect the dots and at this point in time.
But sometimes a person who fits none of these categories comes into your life. This is the joker who pops out of the deck at odd intervals over the years, often during a moment of crisis. In the movies this sort of character is known as the fifth business, or the change agent. When he turns up in a film, you know he’s there because the screenwriter put him there. But who is screenwriting our lives? Fate or coincidence?
In him, they saw again the coming of the White, that ancient, resilient, yet humble force that has redeemed humankind again and again and again.
As usual, the world was in a state similar to his. Friction in diplomatic circles, earthquakes and gunfire, murder, rape, tornadoes and collisions, business conflicts, gangsterism. God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world, thought Arthur Jeffrey Wilson.
Isn’t there ever any getting away from it?
I was still too nervous about my rediscovered ability to want to change anything about the environment in which I was doing it. Stupid, maybe, but sometimes things work just because you think they work. It’s as good a definition of faith as any.
And the shooting will happen so fast and be over so quick that you’ll wonder what all the planning and palaver was for, when in the end it always comes down to the same five minutes’ worth of blood, pain, and stupidity.
Louis embraced her, realizing that this was the way it work or the way it was supposed to work, anyway – some kind of human charge that went back and forth, loosening up the hard earth of loss, venting it, breaking up the rocky path of shock with the heat of sorrow.
Love o love o careless love See what careless love has done.
If we believe in monsters, in the supernatural, how do we believe in anything?
You could help me by shutting up,” Eddie said, and the grill spoke no more. He found himself wondering if he had offended it, then wondered if perhaps he should kill himself and spare the world a problem.
They no longer saw themselves as doers or avengers or saviors; the day had absorbed them. Helplessly, they were only living.
There was some arking and barking at dinner...
He would regret this decision – if it was a decision – bitterly, but there never came a time when he did not understand it.