Benjamin

“him. He had connections here, of course, and that was the problem. His mind sensed the lives lost to make the unlovely Dawn of Fire, the many thousands of humans living in squalor required to keep it running. No matter how comfortable he made his chambers, and there were definite limits to that, he felt as if he were dwelling in a pavilion erected upon a platform, and though the pavilion was very fine, beneath the platform squirmed piles of vermin feeding desperately upon each other in the dark.”
― Guy Haley, The Silent King

“Next morning I got up and it did not. The first day after a death, the new absence Is always the same; we should be careful Of each other, we should be kind While there is still time.”
― Martin Amis, Inside Story

“In the days leading up to the passage of Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act of 2010), I listened on the radio to ‘a town hall’. ‘I happen to be an American,’ said a woman in the audience, her voice yodelling and hiccuping with emotion, ‘and I don’t want to live in a country like the Soviet Union!’ Or, she might have said, a country (at last) beginning (at least) to emulate Canada, Australia, and all the constituent states of the EU. But in the US saying ‘like Europe’, or ‘like England’, or ‘like France’, or ‘like Switzerland’, is the rough equivalent of saying ‘like the Soviet Union’ – which disappeared for ever in 1991.”
― Martin Amis, Inside Story

“But your wife is dead,” said Reiter. “I had a son and a daughter,” Reiter heard him whisper, “but they died too. My son in the battle of Kursk and my daughter during a bombing raid on Hamburg.” “Don’t you have any other relatives?” asked Reiter. “Two little grandchildren, twins, a girl and a boy, but they died in the same raid.” “Good God,” said Reiter. “My son-in-law died too, not in the raid, but days later, from sorrow at the death of his wife and children.” “That’s terrible,” said Reiter. “He killed himself by taking rat poison,” whispered Zeller in the dark. “He suffered agonies for three days before he died.”
― Roberto Bolaño, 2666