“Men were good for one thing only. Killing spiders. Other than that, I was on my own. It was sad though. Where was the chivalry of yesteryear?”
“I had to say it gave me a warm feeling to picture Meredith Winslow spending twenty years or so in an ill fitting orange jumpsuit, cozying up to a great big girl named Beulah”
“He'd once explained that when he was a boy his very proper parents had forbidden him and his brothers to curse in the house so 'feather buckets' was the young boys coded way of saying 'f*ck it”
“Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.”
“She wore leopard-skin leggings, a tight black turtleneck sweater and sparkly red heels. I don't make this stuff up.”
“So how's the putrid pile of caca doing?”
“Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content. —Paul Valéry”
“Men were good for one thing only. Killing spiders.”
“I needed another sibling the way I needed a sixth toe. Or a twelfth toe. You know, an extra one on each foot. Never mind.”
“She came across as charming and efficient, but problems erupted as soon as she started. Two of my best people threatened to quit, so I took her off the project.” I could barely watch as she laughed and yakked like an intimate friend of both Ian’s and Baldacchio’s. On tonight of all nights, the opening of Abraham’s exhibition. I had to wonder, was she here because of me? Everyone in the business knew he’d been my teacher and mentor. Was I completely paranoid? I would’ve loved to pursue the topic of Minka’s shortcomings and find out how in the world she’d finagled a job at the Covington in the first place, but Abraham’s friend Doris interrupted us just then, grabbing Abraham’s arm and giving it a vigorous shake. “Now, what were you yelling about, old man?” she said. I almost snorted. “Doris Bondurant,” Abraham said formally, “I’d like to introduce my former assistant and now my greatest competition, Brooklyn Wainwright. Brooklyn, this is my old friend Doris Bondurant.” “Watch who you’re calling old, buster,” she said, and elbowed Abraham in”
“But I never forgot Shosha. I dreamed of her at night. In my dreams she was both dead and alive. I played with her in a garden which was also a cemetery. Dead girls joined us there, wearing garments that were ornate shrouds. They danced in circles and sang songs. They swung, skated, occasionally hovered in the air. The birds there were different from any I knew. They were as big as eagles, as colorful as parrots. They spoke Yiddish. From the thickets surrounding the garden, beasts with human faces showed themselves. Shosha was at home in this garden, and instead of my pointing out and explaining to her as I had done in the past, she revealed to me things I hadn't known and whispered secrets in my ear. Her hair had grown long enough to reach her loins, and her flesh glowed like mother-of-pearl. I always awoke from this dream with a sweet taste in my mouth and the impression that Shosha was on longer living.”
“My auntie Chava used to tell me to chew my words before letting them out. "Seven times, Majan," she would say. "Chew them seven times.”
“real tragedy is never a straightforward confrontation between Good and Evil, but is, rather, much more exquisitely and much more agonizingly, a conflict between two irreconcilable views of the world.”
“A little while later Jack walked into the kitchen at the bar and saw Preacher scowl his greeting. Bravely, Jack walked up to the counter. “Hey, man,” he said. “You were
right, I was wrong, and I’d like us to get back on the same team.”
“You sure this team of mine isn’t too much trouble for little you?” Preacher asked.
“Okay, you about done? Because this really hurts and I’m trying not to deck you right
now.”
“But I really wanted to believe that there were these magic celestial bodies that would direct my life, tell me what to do, and it turns out it's not stars, it's some bits of screwy DNA. I'm just meat with faulty programming.”
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