The smell of peace is abroad, the air is cold, the skies are brittle, and the leaves have finally fallen. I wear a pony coat with skin like watered silk and muff of lamb. My fingers lie in depths of warmth. I have a jacket of silver sequins and heavy bracelets of rich corals. I wear about my neck a triple thread-like chain of lapis lazulis and pearls. On my face is softness and content like a veil of golden moonlight. And I have never in all my lives been so lonely.
--Erik Larson, In The Garden Of Beasts: Love, Terror, And An American Family In Hitler's Berlin
We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget.
--Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious LIves Of Human Cadavers
Melt all the guns, I thought, break the knives, burn the guillotines-and the malicious will still write letters that kill.
--Ray Bradbury, Death Is A Lonely Business
He feels, as he sometimes does, as most people must, a presence in the room, what he can only think of as his and Rebecca's living ghosts, the amalgamation of their dreams and their breathing, their smells. He does not believe in ghosts, but he believes in...something. Something viable, something living, that's surprised when he wakes at this hour, that's neither glad nor sorry to see him awake but that recognizes the fact, because it has been interrupted in its nocturnal inchoate musings.
--Michael Cunningham, By Nightfall
I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time. And when I would have to look at them day after day, each with his and her secret and selfish thought, and blood strange to each other blood and strange to mine, and think that this seemed to be the only way I could get ready to stay dead, I would hate my father for having ever planted me. I would look forward to the times when they faulted, so I could whip them. When the switch fell I could feel it upon my flesh; when it welted and ridged it was my blood that ran, and I would think with each blow of the switch: Now you are aware of me! Now I am something in your secret and selfish life, who have marked your blood with my own for ever and ever.
--William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
--Erik Larson, In The Garden Of Beasts: Love, Terror, And An American Family In Hitler's Berlin
We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget.
--Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious LIves Of Human Cadavers
Melt all the guns, I thought, break the knives, burn the guillotines-and the malicious will still write letters that kill.
--Ray Bradbury, Death Is A Lonely Business
He feels, as he sometimes does, as most people must, a presence in the room, what he can only think of as his and Rebecca's living ghosts, the amalgamation of their dreams and their breathing, their smells. He does not believe in ghosts, but he believes in...something. Something viable, something living, that's surprised when he wakes at this hour, that's neither glad nor sorry to see him awake but that recognizes the fact, because it has been interrupted in its nocturnal inchoate musings.
--Michael Cunningham, By Nightfall
I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time. And when I would have to look at them day after day, each with his and her secret and selfish thought, and blood strange to each other blood and strange to mine, and think that this seemed to be the only way I could get ready to stay dead, I would hate my father for having ever planted me. I would look forward to the times when they faulted, so I could whip them. When the switch fell I could feel it upon my flesh; when it welted and ridged it was my blood that ran, and I would think with each blow of the switch: Now you are aware of me! Now I am something in your secret and selfish life, who have marked your blood with my own for ever and ever.
--William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
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