Something Wicked This Way Comes (Green Town, #2)

by Ray Bradbury

Like all boys, they never walked anywhere, but named a goal and lit for it, scissors and elbows. Nobody won. Nobody wanted to win. It was in their friendship they just wanted to run forever, shadow and shadow.

You had to run with a night like this, so the sadness could not hurt.

So there they go, Jim running slower to stay with Will, Will running faster to stay with Jim, Jim breaking two windows in a haunted house because Will’s along, Will breaking one window instead of none, because Jim’s watching. God, how we get our fingers in each other’s clay. That’s friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of the other.

Have a drink!?” “I don’t need it,” said Halloway. “But someone inside me does.” “Who?” The boy I once was, thought Halloway, who runs like the leaves down the sidewalk autumn nights. But he couldn’t say that.

She could feel the mirrors waiting for her in each room much the same as you felt, without opening your eyes, that the first snow of winter has just fallen outside your window.

“Good is no guarantee for your body. It’s mainly for peace of mind—”

We are the creatures that know and know too much. That leaves us with such a burden again we have a choice, to laugh or cry.

We salt our lives with other people’s sins. Our flesh to us tastes sweet.

“Why, most men jump at the chance to give up everything for nothing. There’s nothing we’re so slapstick with as our own immortal souls.

Life in the end seemed a prank of such size you could only stand off at this end of the corridor to note its meaningless length and its quite unnecessary height, a mountain built to such ridiculous immensities you were dwarfed in its shadow and mocking of its pomp.

Idiot thing to want: everything! Poor damned fools. So wound up with nothing like the dumb dog who dropped his bone to go after the reflection of the bone in the pond.