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Like many my age, I believe people in groups are to be feared and that arguing with others is folly and the knowledge of one generation cannot be passed down to the next.
Most investigative cops, often without knowing who Niccolò Machiavelli was, adhere to his admonition to keep your friends close but your enemies closer.
No, that’s not correct. Tony didn’t sit; he piled himself into a chair or on a couch like a gelatinous heap of whale sperm thrown on a beach, except he was wearing a blue suit with a red boutonniere in the lapel.
cool even for March, the flowerpots on the balconies bursting with color, the kind of day in Louisiana that lifts the heart and tells you perhaps spring is forever, that the long rainy weeks of winter were nothing more than a passing aberration, that even death can be stilled by the season if you’ll only believe.
A female secretary answered and took a message. Did you ever have a conversation with a professional ice cube?
“War is usually interesting only to people who haven’t been to one.”
“You know what they say at meetings. Coincidence is your Higher Power acting with anonymity.” “I didn’t know you were in the program.” “I’m not. I go for the dialogue. It’s great material.”
Three of his live oaks were registered with a national conservation society and named Mosby, Forrest, and Longstreet, perhaps indicating a tired and old and depressing Southern obsession with the illusion that war is grand.
The cops and firemen who walked into stairwells that were not stairwells but chimneys filled with flame and smoke, proved that the human spirit is unconquerable, and it is these men and women who define what is best in us.
I hate them now. But they live in me like a snake that slowly swallows its prey, compressing it into a canister of despair and pain.
The real damage I carried was one nobody saw. I’d hear the tiger padding around the house at three or four in the morning, then he’d sniff his way into the bedroom, glowing so brightly that the air would glisten and warp and my eyes would sting.
say. I disliked people who thought war was a glorious endeavor, and I disliked those who enjoyed talking about it. I despised those who had not seen war yet espoused it and lived vicariously through the suffering of others and never gave a thought to the civilians and children who died in burn wards or were
buried under collapsed buildings.
Louisiana is not a state; it’s an outdoor mental asylum in which millions of people stay bombed most of their lives. That’s not an exaggeration. Cirrhosis is a family heirloom.
