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Of course people couldn’t help but think I must be a bit of a dyke myself. And of course I am. Everyone is: a bit. So what?
He was a middle-aged child that had never shed its baby fat, though some gifted tailor had almost succeeded in camouflaging his plump and spankable bottom.
This was said to be the reason Winchell always referred to him as a Nazi; that, and the fact that he attended rallies in Yorkville.
I want to still be me when I wake up one fine morning and have breakfast at Tiffany’s.
When I married Lulamae, that was in December, 1938, she was going on fourteen.
Nor did they seem aware of Madame Sapphia Spanella, who opened her door and yelled: “Shut up! It’s a disgrace. Do your whoring elsewhere.”
But you can’t give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they’re strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That’s how you’ll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You’ll end up looking at the sky.”
“Good luck: and believe me, dearest Doc—it’s better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.”
How do you feel if you’re in love? she asked. Ah, said Rosita with swooning eyes, you feel as though pepper has been sprinkled on your heart, as though tiny fish are swimming in your veins.
Three and four times a day she filled a bucket of drinking water and carried it to where Royal worked in the cane fields a mile below the house. She did not mind that on these visits he was gruff with her: she knew that he was showing off before the other men who worked in the fields, and who grinned at her like split watermelons.
To be alive was to remember brown rivers where the fish run, and sunlight on a lady’s hair.
