An ad that pretends to be art is -- at absolute best -- like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a...
Je fais mon lit et mon ménage; I seek my dinner in a restaurant; my supper takes care, of itself; I pass days laborious and loveless; nights long and lonely; I am ferocious, and bearded and monkish; and nothing now living in this world loves me, exc...
When my head is in the typewriter the last thing on my mind is some imaginary reader. I don’t have an audience; I have a set of standards. But when I think of my work out in the world, written and published, I like to imagine it’s being read by s...
[first lines] Bill: The following is my explanation. Well, more of an account of what happened. I'd been on my own for a while and getting kind of lonely... and bored... nothing to do all day. And that's when I started shadowing. The Policeman: Shado...
Michael Murphy: *Fuck.* Worst fucking comms. Marcus Luttrell: Well, we could light these goats on fire, smoke signal our way outta here. Danny Dietz: Yeah, I could walk down to the village, ask 'em to borrow a phone. Marcus Luttrell: You could get so...
Marianne Borg: I saw you with your mother, and I was panic-stricken. Professor Isak Borg: I don't understand. Marianne Borg: I thought: That's his mother. An old woman, cold as ice, more forbidding than death. And this is her son, and there are light...
People, her people at least, were always chasing shattered hopes. A father gazing down on dead soil, with a brood of hollow-cheeked children sitting around a barren table. A lonely maid cleaning grates and waiting for a lover who by now wouldn't even...
She reached out, her fingers hesitant. The deer—Knox—tilted his head down, letting her touch his antlers. Her hand trembled slightly as she caressed the boney protrusion. The ivory tines were warmer than she thought they’d be, a living extensio...
Pull over,” said Charles, his voice rough. Isaac wasn’t going to argue with him. So he eased the van to a stop on the shoulder of the road. Charles hopped out, patted the side of the car, and said, “Go on out to the address I gave you. I’m go...
I know how you guys feel about us. I'm not stupid, and believe me, I've tried to get you out of my head. But there isn't enough liquor or art or any other distraction in the world to do it. I had to stop going to Wolfe's because it was too hard being...
Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course overestimated, for it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour. Take that man I had aloft. He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamond...
The ugliest thing in America is greed, the lust for power and domination, the lunatic ideology of perpetual Growth - with a capital G. 'Progress' in our nation has for too long been confused with 'Growth'; I see the two as different, almost incompati...
Let's say I will rip your life apart. Me and my banker friends. How can he explain that to him? The world is not run from where he thinks. Not from border fortresses, not even from Whitehall. The world is run from Antwerp, from Florence, from places ...
Walter Neff: Dear Keyes, I suppose you'll call this a confession when you hear it... Well, I don't like the word confession, I just want to set you right about something you couldn't see because it was smack up against your nose. You think you're suc...
Mr. Fox: [Mr. Fox on a motorcycle speaking to a wolf off on a distant ridge] Where did you come from? Mr. Fox: What are you doing here? Mr. Fox: I don't think he speaks English or Latin Mr. Fox: Pensez-vous que l'hiver sera rude? Mr. Fox: [as an asid...
[first lines] Radio announcer: President Truman'll be here tomorrow, so all you folks in Dallas turn out, chuh hear? This is Cowboy Rhythms on KTRN, Wichita Falls, here's Hank Williams' big hit tune, "Cold Cold Heart". Sam the Lion: You ain't ever go...
We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the...
A phenomenon that a number of people have noted while in deep depression is the sense of being accompanied by a second self — a wraithlike observer who, not sharing the dementia of his double, is able to watch with dispassionate curiosity as his co...
In the country, I stopped being a person who, in the words of Sylvia Boorstein, . I grew calmer, but beneath that calm was a deep well of loneliness I hadn't known was there. ... Anxiety was my fuel. When I stopped, it was all waiting for me: fear, a...
I hate to go mincing through life, afraid to take a single long step for fear somebody is watching. I want to "wave my wild tail and walk by my wild lone." There wasn't a bit of real harm in my opening that window and talking to Perry. There wasn't e...
I'm rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I'm tired of bein on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain. Not never havin no buddy to go on with or tell me where we's comin from or goin to or why. I'm tired of people bein ugly to each other....
