twenty-third

“The space between the idea of something and its reality is always wide and deep and dark. The longer they are kept apart—idea of thing, reality of thing—the wider the width, the deeper the depth, the thicker and darker the darkness.”
― Jamaica Kincaid, The Best American Essays 1995

“Streets teemed with hell's wretched souls. New dead with their gadgets and old dead from antiquity. Demons roamed the avenues and alleyways, tormenting hapless damned at random with branding irons, flaming pitchforks, and razor-wire whips. -From the story Remember, Remember, Hell in November, in the anthology, Lawyers in Hell.”
― Larry Atchley Jr.

“There were still choices to be made, decisions to reach, actions to take. Many of them. But in one...single declaration of intent, we stepped across the threshold of war.”
― Diana Gabaldon, A Breath of Snow and Ashes

“Actually he was a pessimist, and, like all pessimists, a ridiculously unobservant man.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov