A Lion Among Men

Remember to breathe. It is after all, the secret of life.

A male usually had made up his mind before you began to talk to him -so why bother?- but a female, because her mind was more supple, was always prepared to become more disappointed in you than she had yet suspected possible.

The future reshapes the memory of the past in the way it recalibrates significance; some episodes are advanced, others lose purchase.

He knew about being alone. The weather was always cold there.

Perhaps family itself, like beauty, is temporary, and no discredit need attach to impermanence.

We start out in identical perfection: bright, reflective, full of sun. The accident of our lives bruises us into dirty individuality. We meet with grief. Our character dulls and tarnishes. We meet with guilt. We know, we know: the price of living is corruption. There isn’t as much light as there once was. In the grave we lapse back into undifferentiated sameness

Just my luck, if I believed in luck. I only believe in the opposite of luck, whatever that is.

The momentum of the mind can be vexingly, involuntarily capricious.

He hadn't yet had enough experience with humans to know that the thing they hold dearest to their hearts, the last thing they relinquish when all else is fading, is the consoling belief in the inferiority of others.

Children played at those stories; they dreamed about them. They took them to heart and acted as if to live inside them.

Your transparency is just another one of your disguises, isn't it?

The future reshapes the memory of the past in the way it recalibrates significance: some episodes are advanced, others lose purchase.

I have the distinct feeling I'm not in Oz anymore,' said Brrr.

We live in our tales of ourselves, she thought, and ignore as best we can the contradictions, and the lapses, and the abrasions of plot against our mortal souls...

I'm not involved in shame. Morals are learned in childhood, and I didn't have any such holiday called childhood.

We live in our tales of ourselves. . . and ignore as best we can the contradictions, and the lapses, and the abrasions of plot against our mortal souls. . .

Are you an aberration to your species?' she cried. 'Cats don't look for approval!

And what new life can emerge from a book. Any book, maybe.

He was not so lucky. He hadn't yet had enough experience with humans to know that the thing the hold dearest to their hearts, the last thing they relinquish when all else is fading, is the consoling belief in the inferiority of others.

He didn’t remember that a mere book might reek of sex, possibility, fecundity. Yet a book has a ripe furrow and a yielding spine, he thought, and the nuances to be teased from its pages are nearly infinite in their variety and coquettish appeal. And what new life can emerge from a book. Any book, maybe.

When you can't die, she thought, everything sounds like a clock ticking.

The circularity of influence was like a trail of dominoes falling in four dimensions. Each time one slapped another and fell to the ground, from a different vantage point it appeared knocked upright, ready to be slapped and fall again. Everything was not merely relative, it was--how to put it? --relevant. Representational. Revealing. Referential and reverential both.

The unvisited grannies, in stone houses by the wheat field, can't remember their husbands or children. They worry their hands, though, hands that could do with a rinsing. The grannies think: We start out in identical perfection: bright, reflective, full of sun. The accident of our lives bruises us into dirty individuality. We meet with grief. Our character dulls and tarnishes. We meet with guilt. We know, we know: the price of living is corruption. There isn't as much light as there once was. In the grave we lapse back into undifferentiated sameness.

I was quite a looker in my time," she said. Was she reading his mind, or only being smart, to know she must be hideous? "Oh, had they invented time as long ago as that?

What goes unnamed remains hard to correct.

But this was fancy; she was succumbing to fancy in a way she hadn't done before.

Brrr, who had never admired books particularly...didn't remember that a mere book might reek of sex, possibility, fecundity. Yet a book has a ripe furrow and a yielding spine, he thought, and the nuances to be teased from its pages are nearly infinite in their variety and coquettish appeal. And what new life can emerge from a book. Any book, maybe.