Eustace Chisholm and the Works

Some people confess in the flesh, others on paper.

Why, if Daniel Haws was to take out his naked cock and shake it in your face, you’d die of apoplexy.

Mexican marijuana, which he called the schoolboy’s consolation.

Amos, talk about pearls for teeth ... you got ‘em. No wonder the boys go for you, because I could too and if I had something to push between those pearly teeth I’d be first in line.

It was paper, as he had once joked to Amos, that he was really queer for.

One fine day you’ve got to give your body to somebody, or turn into a fully-fledged zombie.

Carla had the American woman’s fixed idea that love can cure, love can heal, love can bind a flowing wound.

She made no point of concealing the truth, for the truth was all she could bear now.

Ace sat down and inflated his cheeks like the wind gods in Italian paintings.

There was the cruel kind of Eustace silence.

Maureen had been born with the face of a gargoyle on the body of a sylph.

One morning while drinking coffee with Amos, Daniel Haws looked up suddenly, as if feeling the boy’s eyes on him, and said: “Tryin’ to burn holes starin’ like that?” “Guess I was just resting my eyes on you so as not to look at your wallpaper,” Amos gave a sour apology. Daniel closed the book he was reading, a volume of Rhodes’s history of the United States, and took a careful look at the kitchen wallpaper. “Yes,” he admitted, “that wallpaper is goddam ancient.