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At first you were afraid you’d die, then you were afraid you wouldn’t. That’s what Wireman says, and he would have known; he had his own season in hell.
I propose you try a geographical.” “Beg pardon?” “It’s a form of recovery often attempted by late-stage alcoholics. They hope that a change of location will give them a fresh start. Turn things around.”
Remember that the truth is in the details. No matter how you see the world or what style it imposes on your work as an artist, the truth is in the details.
I’ve been waiting for you, it said.
It's amazing how clear these scenes are in my memory, and how I can still see the jacket of the hardcover and feel myself falling into this book so many years ago in Kansas. I remember it more cleanly than anything out in that country.
Later, Wireman would tell me God always punishes us for what we can’t imagine.
Pain is the biggest power of love. That’s what Wireman says.
Meantime, do the day and let the day do you!”
I saw no one and spoke to no one but myself. The extraneous dropped away almost entirely, and when that happens, you begin to hear yourself clearly. And clear communication between selves—the surface self and the deep self is what I mean—is the enemy of self-doubt. It slays confusion.
we fool ourselves so much we could do it for a living. That’s what Wireman says, and he’s often right. Probably too often. Even now.
“Snooping is what it was, snooping is all it was, and I paid the price.”
She paused, frowned, and put a finger to the dimple in one side of her plump chin. “Vito? Is it Vito, Wireman?” He smiled. “TiVo, Miss Eastlake.”
Hello 2005!
Sometimes the only way to do it is to do it.
Sounds good, rings false, I thought as I started up the stairs again. I think you’re lying, and you know what? I think you know I know.
“I been fucked to the east and I been fucked to the west,” Wireman recited in tones of sentimental recollection, “but when it comes to the fuckin, yo mamma’s the best.” With that he lapsed into silence.
Doesn’t change the fact that I’m busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest…
“Not having a good lawyer present, I was reduced to the truth.”
On the other side of the long table, Elizabeth’s doze had deepened into real sleep. Once she might have been young and beautiful. Once she might have been some young man’s dream baby. Now she was snoring with her mostly toothless mouth pointed at the ceiling. If there’s a God, I think He needs to try a little harder.
as circuses have a way of doing, only minus one accountant. Shall I tell you we were very much in love?” “No,” I said. “I hear it every time you say her name.” “Thank you, Edgar. Thanks.”
“Just another version of the Powerball. Five numbers, plus that all-important Bonus Number. Click, click, click, click, click. And then clack for good measure. Did I think such a thing could happen to me? No, muchacho, never in my wildest, and God punishes us for what we can’t imagine.
“Matters have come to a sad pass when I offer respect and you hear sarcasm.”
“I could charter a plane,” I said. “A Gulfstream. Take a whole floor at the Ritz-Carlton. Blow a big wad. Why the fuck not?”
Solve writing problems by making your characters rich.
“County coroner says Candy Brown died of congestive heart failure. Just thought you’d like to know.”
If I’d never loved, I never would have cried.
“Yes,” I said. I was clear on something else, as well: when someone offers you a blank check, you must never, ever cash it. That wasn’t a thing I thought out. Sometimes understanding bypasses the brain and proceeds directly from the heart.
Which leads us to discuss if, deep down, Edgar Freemantle has decided that when the time comes, he’s just going to—in the words of my misspent youth—cry fuck it and crawl in the bucket.”
when memory takes its strongest hold, our own bodies become ghosts, haunting us with the gestures of our younger selves.
Ric’s not surprised. He says you should never trust a person who prays in public.
Ain't that the truth
Because an honest woman may occasionally goof the truth, but a good liar never varies her story.
War Is Good Business, Invest Your Son.” “Vietnam protest movement, 1969,” I said. “Often seen in tandem with A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle.”
Give me a choice and I’ll take A Midsummer Night’s Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.”
Someday, if your life is long and your thinking machinery stays in gear, you’ll live to remember the last good thing that ever happened to you.
“How can you have something this big inside you and not know?” she demanded.
‘Speak, memory, that I may not forget the taste of roses nor the sound of ashes in the wind; That I may once more taste the green cup of the sea.’
Pain is the biggest power of love. That’s what Wireman says.
In the end we all go smash to the floor.
She was a critic, and lots of critics who aren’t called to do what they write about grow jealous and mean and small in their disappointment.
the only way to go on is to go on. To say I can do this even when you know you can’t.
life is a wheel, and if you wait long enough, it always comes back around to where it started.
“We repeat what we learn as children.”
I held my hands about two feet from each other, considered, then moved them a little farther apart.
“Listen to me, Edgar, and listen good. There are actually five acts, and not just in American lives—in every life that’s fully lived. Same as in every Shakespearian play, tragedy and comedy alike. Because that’s what our lives are made up of—comedy and tragedy.”
I thought there would be time, but we always think stuff like that, don’t we? We fool ourselves so much we could do it for a living.
