Evil’s just destructive? Then storms are evil, if it’s that simple. And we have fire, and there there’s hail. Underwriters lump it all under ‘Acts of God.
Show Dr. Princi your teeth. That’s right, let’s see ’em all. Christ, Sparks, is that your tongue or are you swallowing a squirrel? Keep moving -.
We assign a moment to decision, to dignify the process as a timely result of rational and conscious thought. But decisions are made of kneaded feelings; they are more often a lump than a sum.
Waste and stupidity get you the worst, that’s what he said. Use this time and it’ll temper you. Now’s the hardest test – not letting rage and frustration keep you from thinking. It’s the core of whether you can command or not.
Barney did not reply. He looked at Krendler as though the left and right hemispheres of Krendler’s brain were two dogs stuck together.
Crawford was home for a month from the hospital, the chest pains came again in the night. Instead of calling an ambulance and going through it all again, he chose simply to roll over to the solace of his late wife’s side of the bed.
The enemy inside Graham agreed with any accusation.
Crawford saw that in this place Starling was heir to the granny women, to the wise women, the herb healers, the stalwart country women who have always done the needful, who keep the watch and when the watch is over, wash and dress the country dead.
No. You know – having to look. It’s always bad, but you get so you can function anyway, as long as they’re dead. The hospital, interviews, that’s worse. You have to shake it off and keep on thinking. I don’t believe I could do it now. I could make myself look, but I’d shut down the thinking.
Which do you think, Commendatore? Bowels in or out?
Good,” Mapp said. “That’s very good. Eat some crabs. Grab Pilcher and smooch him on his face, go wild.
Starling looked at Crawford steadily, but she was too still. “Hannibal the Cannibal,” she said.
You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It’s all there and you just have to find it.
A census taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone. Go back to school, little Starling.
The tragedy is not to die, but to be wasted.
I collect church collapses, recreationally. Did you see the recent one in Sicily? Marvelous! The facade fell on sixty-five grandmothers at a special mass. Was that evil? If so, who did it? If he’s up there, he just loves it, Officer Starling. Typhoid and swans – it all comes from the same place.
How seldom we recognize the sound when the bolt of our fate slides home.
We can only learn so much and live.
He sees very clearly – he damn sure sees through me. It’s hard to accept that someone can understand you without wishing you well. At Starling’s age it hadn’t happened to her much.
One can only see what one observes, and one observes only things which are already in the mind.