A.

“Show your cock," she says, and dies again.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“Maybe the God we see, the God who calls the daily shots, is merely a subGod. Maybe there’s a God above this subGod who’s busy for a few God minutes with something else, and will be right back; and when he gets back will take the subGod by the ear and say: Now look. Look at that fat man. What did he ever do to you? Wasn’t he humble enough? Didn’t he endure enough abuse for a thousand men? Weren’t the simplest tasks hard? Didn’t you sense him craving affection? Were you unaware that his days unraveled as one long bad dream? And maybe as the subGod slinks away, the true God will sweep me up in his arms, saying: My sincere apologies, a mistake has been made. Accept a new birth, as token of my esteem.”
― George Saunders, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

“The red world And corresponding red breezes
Went on Geryon did not”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“What a degraded cosmos. What a case of something starting out nice and going bad.”
― George Saunders, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline