In the Netherlands I read the first chapter of Exquisite Corpse to an audience that laughed in all the places I thought were funny – an experience I’ve never had in America!
Help the ones you love, his grandmother had told him, help them when you can, and after that, mind your business. Your gift doesn’t give you the right to go rearranging other people’s lives for them. You might see their souls, but they won’t always want you to be their mirror.
Death doesn’t hurt,” said one of the twins, and a light came into his silver eyes. “Death is dark, death is sweet.” The other twin took up the litany. “Death is all that lasts forever. Death is eternal beauty.” “Death is a lover with a thousand tongues – ” “A thousand insect caresses – ” “Death is easy.
My grandmother told me you shouldn’t try to define evil, that the minute you think you’ve got it all pinned down, a kind of evil you never even thought of will sneak up behind you and jump inside your head. I don’t think anyone knows what evil is. I don’t think anyone has the right to say.
Jay stopped and unlocked an iron gate with finals wrought in the shape of pineapples.
Atheists loved to use that term to describe some shadowy force that somehow controlled human destiny, but what the hell did they think the universe was?
I’d say to myself, Andrew Compton, you’ve sucked their cold mouths and cocks; you’ve licked their blood from your hands by the bucketful; you’ve boiled the flesh off their skulls, then used the same pot to make curry. Why not just fry up a few tender bits and see what it’s like – perhaps with a nice egg?
Magic happens when and where it wants to.
Stay with me.’ His eyes shone. ‘Play with me.
So what do I do with the rest of my time? he thought. Live rent-free with my parents, write in my notebooks, go out dancing, catch a buzz, get laid? It doesn’t sound so bad. But what if I only have, say, five more years to live?
A heart like an artichoke?” “Oui. He has a leaf for everyone, but makes a meal for no one.
It was as if America had begun the decade of the eighties by shattering some great cosmic mirror, except that the seven years of bad luck hadn’t ended yet. The wizened, evil-faced dybbuk in the White House had been as alien a being as Trevor could imagine, a shriveled yet hideously animated puppet thrust into power by the same shadowy forces that had controlled the world since Trevor was five, forces he could not control, could barely see or begin to understand.
Rickey wondered briefly who they were before the lovely floaty feeling wiped away his curiosity. “You got a concussion and a broken ankle, but you’re gonna be fine.
I am Nothing. He liked the name. It did not make him feel worthless; on the contrary, he began to think of himself as a blank slate upon which anything could be written. The words inscribed on his soul were up to him.
There was a chill in the air, to be sure, a damp cool vapour drifting round corners and rising from drains. But I had just come from London, where November vapours were like ill-intentioned hands sliding beneath your collar to encircle your coat-chafed, chicken-skinned throat, where November winds cut more deeply than my stolen scalpel ever did.
Any time someone is afraid of you, you can use it to your own advantage.
That chap looks as if he ate a girl’s kidney last night.
They may hate us for sucking cock, but at least they can’t accuse of making more little cocksuckers.
I’m Lush Rimbaud, and I refuse to shut up or die.
Like someone trying to gargle boiling water.
I suspected later that I might actually saved lives by killing some of them.