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She is eighteen now. Life will be an endless swirl of parties and dances.
It is a time of celebrity, of fame and fortune and grasping, and the young burn with secret ambition.
There were few things worse than being ordinary, in Evie’s opinion. Ordinary was for suckers. Evie wanted to be special. A bright star.
In New York, she could be anyone she chose to be. It was a big city—just the place for big dreamers who needed to shine brightly.
God is dead.” “He’s not dead; just very tired.”
HERE BE THE HOPES AND DREAMS OF A NATION, BUILT UPON THE BACKS OF MEN AND LIFTED BY THE WINGS OF ANGELS.
There are more things between heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’
“Theta Knight. You can call me anything—just not before noon.”
It’s just the Bennington, dear.”
“I guess we’re all just dreamers trying to find our way in this extraordinary country,
Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city.’ ”
The city ran on corruption as much as on electricity.
Manhattan unfurled before her like a jeweler’s velvet adorned with diamonds.
It was all going to be the berries.
Evie crawled home to Will’s apartment just ahead of the morning sun with the feeling that everything was possible in Manhattan and that a great adventure lay ahead of her—just as soon as she slept off the night.
That was what Evie loved best about going to the pictures: the chance to dream herself into a different, more glamorous life.
“I met you on the street in Ohio. We were married at the Kansas state fair. You left me lonely in Florida. Now I’m in a state of despair
“The eternal recurrence, Nietzsche calls it,” Jericho said.
a building that smelled of old books and yearning.
“The line between faith and fanaticism is a constantly shifting one,” Dr. Poblocki said. “When does belief become justification? When does right become rationale and crusade become crime?”
You go on home now, Mr. Campbell. Get you some rest. Live to fight another day. Plenty of time for regrettin’. Go out and have you some good times while you still young.”
If there was one truth Evie had learned in her short life, it was that forgiveness was easier to seek than permission. She didn’t plan to ask for either one.
Mabel signaled for a waiter. “Could I have a Sloe Gin Fizz, without the gin?” “What’s the point of that, Miss?” the waiter said. “Tomorrow morning,” Mabel said.
“To the good stuff just out of sight,” Theta echoed.
And you are?” “Just a girl in a nightclub.” Theta blew out a stream of smoke.
“What’s wrong with Anna Karenina?” “Everything from A to enina.
But what was the point of living so quietly you made no noise at all?
Yes, she was too much. She felt like too much inside all the time. So why wasn’t she ever enough?
“We are all a long way from home and weary,”
“But Miss Proctor, that’s quite impossible,” Evie said as gently as possible. “It’s an impossible world,” Miss Lillian said, smiling. “Drink your tea, dear.”
She knew that grief, like a scar, faded but never really went away.
“People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense—words do. Beliefs, declarations, constitutions—words. Stories. Myths. Lies. Promises. History.”
he’d never seen anyone so beautiful cry so ugly.
It wasn’t his job to put the fairness back into the world.
There’s nothing more terrifying than the absoluteness of one who believes he’s right,”
the foolish belief that she, that anyone, could escape the consequences of this world, could flee from death. That was the deceit. The true serpent in the garden. And dust you shall eat all the days of your life. . .
A thin cloak of gray clouds passed in the night sky; the moon ducked behind them and hid its face for grief.
they had died tangled in barbed wire in Flanders, hollowed by influenza along the Western Front, blown apart in no-man’s-land, writhing in trenches with those smiles still in place, courtesy of the phosgene, chlorine, or mustard gas. Some had come home shell-shocked and blinking, hands shaking, mumbling to themselves, following orders in some private war still taking place in their minds.
Just a bunch of chess pieces moved about by unseen hands in a universe bored with itself.
They’d sold their children a pack of lies: God and country. Love your parents. All is fair. And then they’d sent those boys, her brother, off to fight a great monster of a war that maimed and killed and destroyed whatever was inside them.
