Mark Merlis > Quotes

“Do you know how sometimes you see a man, and you’re not sure if you want to get in his pants or if you want to cry? Not because you can’t have him; maybe you can. But you see right away something in him beyond having. You can’t screw your way into it, any more than you can get at the golden eggs by slitting the goose. So you want to cry, not like a child, but like an exile who is reminded of his homeland. That’s what Leucon saw when he first beheld Pyrrhus: as if he were getting a glimpse of that other place we were meant to be, the shore from which we were deported before we were born.”
― Mark Merlis, An Arrow's Flight

“I always thought being a writer was the highest calling there was. Don’t you?” - author Mark Merlis”
― Mark Merlis

“every night and was just about to miss the Metroliner—but only Joel recognized him. A forgotten nebbish who seriously thought for a little while he might be president. What was it like, to have had that dream obliterated, so long ago, and then go on living? Did he sometimes fall into it again, a little spurt of Possibilitase tricking him into imagining that maybe next year he would …”
― Mark Merlis, Man About Town: A Novel