The dead," she said. "And we have plenty of dead between us, but the way we act, you'd think they were corpses handing on to our ankles, rather than souls freed to the elements." ... "they're gone, they can't be hurt anymore, but we drag their memory...
He did look like an Italian of the worse type, though Vic didn't think he was, and it was an insult to the Italian race to assume that he was. He resembled no particular race, only an amalgamation of the worst elements of various Latin peoples. He lo...
Like the evangelist, I will shine with the light I have been shown, recognise that I have the ultimate solution for all my prospects, nurture that feeling deep within, and repeat the words to myself every day, until there is no doubt in my mind that ...
Yes, he knew he was falling in love, her way. And the worst part was, as disabling as he found the emotion to be he craved it all the more. To feel this way about a woman was amazing even if it was ‘temporary and fleeting’, as he’d put it. It w...
Yes,” said Mamma, “this is the worst of life, that love does not give us common sense but is a sure way of losing it. We love people, and we say that we are going to do more for them than friendship, but it makes such fools of us that we do far l...
When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard existences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at night are made for mediocre minds – like those horses that are equally good for saddle and carriage, the worst kind, t...
There are two kinds of discontented in this world, the discontented that works and the discontented that wrings its hands. The first gets what it wants and the second loses what it has. There is no cure for the first but success and there is no cure ...
Shock? More like shellshock at this point. Blondie knew I was gay, yet he was a Company Exec or else he wouldn’t be here. I was his butt boy in the worst possible way. When I squinted at him, he gave nothing up. Neither did I. I had shit on this ne...
Overuse at best is needless clutter; at worst, it creates the impression that the characters are overacting, emoting like silent film stars. Still, an adverb can be exactly what a sentence needs. They can add important intonation to dialogue, or subt...
Noble in defeat, he (Nixon) was now without grace in victory. I had seen the president show rare courage when others are around him shrank in fear. Since I had come to respect the president for what he was at his best moments, I learned to accept him...
The worst of such stories is that the triumphant romancers can always be put to confusion and crushed by the very details in which real life is so rich and which these unhappy and involuntary story-tellers neglect as insignificant trifles. Oh, they h...
You'd expect academics, people who are by training comfortable with complexity, to be the most resistant to the idea that we're shaped by any single factor. In fact, they are often the worst offenders. Immersed in their own research, shaped by their ...
Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel again...
The worst book I’ve ever read is “Ulysses,” by Joyce, because like my undergraduate college degree, that’s nine and a half years of my life I’ll never get back. If the book had been about 75 pages shorter, I might have finished it a year or...
It was frankly sort of confusing, the way everyone stared at our bodies exactly as they tried to erase the ideas of our bodies from our minds. We were supposed to get over ourselves but no one was supposed to get over us. The female body was our wors...
I have a rule." "Elaborate." The statue is still warm from the previous visitors. "I ask myself, if the worst happened—if I did get knocked up-would I be embarrassed to tell my child who his father was? If the answer is anywhere even remotely close...
How does evil arise? Where does it come from? We think of malevolent men-— murderers, rapists, tyrants—and somehow believe they are different creatures from us. They are not. All evil men were once innocent babes, once lovable children. Men make ...
He is smitten on the brain, -he reads and writes verses! I caught him in the act! Fools might say he was inspired; but I know it is the first and worst symptom of lunacy. All other maniacs have lucid intervals; some are curable; but the madness of po...
The best men tell you the truth because they think you can take it; the worst men either try to preserve you in some innocent state with their false protection, or are ‘brutally honest.’ When someone tells, lets you think for yourself, experience...
When modern sociologists talk of the necessity of accommodating one's self to the trend of the time, they forget that the trend of the time at its best consists entirely of people who will not accommodate themselves to anything. At its worst it consi...
She gave me the jabs and said I was covered for every worst-case scenario, including being bitten by a dirty chimp. I told her this is why we have over-population problems. Why are idiots who annoy dirty chimps being protected?
