Just After Sunset

The medical definition of miracle is misdiagnosis.

Sooner or later even the fastest runners have to stand and fight.

I have seen many cases like N. during the five years I've been in practice. I sometimes picture these unfortunates as men and women being pecked to death by predatory birds. The birds are invisible - at least until a psychiatrist who is good, or lucky, or both, sprays them with his version of Luminol and shines the right light on them - but they are nevertheless very real. The wonder is that so many OCDs manage to live productive lives, just the same. They work, they eat (often not enough or too much, it's true), they go to movies, they make love to their girlfriends and boyfriends, their wives and husbands . . . and all the time those birds are there, clinging to them and pecking away little bits of flesh.

As infants, our first victory comes in grasping some bit of the world, usually our mother's fingers. Later we discover that the world, and the things of the world, are grasping us, and have been all along.

Any parting could be forever, and we don't know.

Sometimes stories cry out to be told in such loud voices that you write them just to shut them up.

The wonder is that so many OCDs manage to live productive lives, just the same. They work, they eat (often not enough or too much, it's true), they go to the movies, they make love to their girlfriends and boyfriends, their wives and husbands... and all the time those birds are there, clinging to them and pecking away little bits of flesh.

She didn't see him at first. She was watching the dancers. Her color was high, and there were deep dimples at the corners of her mouth. She looked nine miles out of place, but he had never loved her more. This was Willa on the edge of a smile.

Plus, dreams don't have to be logical, do they? Dreams are poems from the subconscious.

There's a gate in our heads, too-that's what I think. One that keeps the insanity in all of us from flooding our intellects. And at critical moments, it swings open and all kinds of weird shit comes flooding through.

She ran out of her marriage the way a woman can run out of a pair of sandals when she decides to let go and really dash.

He pointed toward the silhouettes on the side of the [bathrooms] instead--black cutout man, black cutout woman. The man had his legs apart, the woman had hers together. Pretty much the story of the human race in sign language.

Everybody trusts a guy in a raincoat. I don't know why. It's just one of those mystery facts.

Shit. The mind gets up to funny tricks, doesn't it? Shadows grow faces.

I was struck to my heart and through my heart, knocked clean out of my ordinary life.

Obliqueness is the curse of the reading class.

I don't want to hear the scary part. But at the same time she does want to hear the scary part, everyone wants to hear the scary part, we're all mad here, and her mother really did say that if you told your dreams they wouldn't come true, which meant you were supposed to tell the nightmares and save the good ones for yourself, hide them like a tooth under the pillow.

You see, I may be trying to forget, but I still remember quite a lot.

Because it makes me happy when the words fall together and the picture comes and the make-believe people do things that delight me. But it's better with you, Constant Reader. Always better with you.

She started to turn away, then turned back. She said: 'They did it [September 11] in the name of God, but there is no God. If there was a God, Mr. Staley, He would have struck all eighteen of them dead in their boarding lounges with their boarding passes in their hands, but no God did. They called for passengers to get on and those fucks just got right on.

Right now all he wanted was to get out of this awful place where reality had worn so thin.

In the end, daughter of pandora that I am, my curiosity got the best of me. I wish it hadn't.

I also know it`s true, that thing about how perception switches around and we come to realize that the things we thought we were holding are actually holding us.

You didn't want to call your boyfriend Buddy, but when reverting to his real name meant Bruce, it left you with no real ground to stand on.

It's ironic to think that behaviors we consider neurotic are actually holding the word in place - but sooner or later whatever protection they offer decays.And it's so much work.So damn much work.

But any man can lose his head. That's what they don't realise. Any man. Under the right set of circumstances

Sometimes I think life is a sad, bad business, Doc I really do.

La realidad es un misterio, doctor Bonsaint, y la textura corriente de las cosas es la tela que usamos para ocultar su resplandor y oscuridad. Pienso que cubrimos los rostros de los cadáveres por la misma razón. Vemos las caras de los muertos como una especie de puerta. Está cerrada para nosotros… pero sabemos que no lo estará siempre. Algún día se abrirá para cada uno de nosotros y la atravesaremos.

He combed his hair like Elvis and had a slightly dangerous look, like a sailor two drinks into a shore leave that will end badly.