The Hunting Party

by Lucy Foley

And the ones like me, the mousy nobodies, we don’t always turn out to be the heroes of the tale. Sometimes we have our own dark secrets.

there is something unnerving about the isolation, knowing how far we are from everything.

He has taken lives, many of them in fact. And not just animal. He knows better than anyone that it is not something to boast about. It is a dark place from which you can never quite return. It does something to you, the first time. An essential change somewhere deep in the soul, the amputation of something important. The first time is the worst, but with each death the soul is wounded further. After a while there is nothing left but scar tissue.

Remove all of the distractions, and here, in the silence and solitude, the demons they have kept at bay catch up with them.

Surviving, existing—just. Not living. That is a word for those who seek entertainment, pleasure, comfort out of each day.

we all carry around different versions of ourselves.

Some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don’t need much encouragement at all to become monsters. And sometimes you just get a strong sense about people, and you can’t explain it; you simply know it, in some deeper part of yourself.

But that’s the thing about old friends, isn’t it? Sometimes they don’t even realize that they no longer have anything in common. That maybe they don’t even like each other anymore.

we all submit to being stalked. How we think that we’re in control, sharing what we think we choose to share, but really putting a lot more out there than we’re aware of.

The only weak thing about him, the thing he seems unable to control, is his mind.

Here, loneliness is the natural state of things.