The Lesser Dead

If you’re looking for a story about nice people doing nice things, this isn’t for you. You will be burdened with an unreliable narrator who will disappoint and repel you at every turn. Still with me? Too bad for you. I can’t wait to break your heart.

We just don’t deserve dogs, do we?

Happiness is the province of those who ask few questions.

Envy and respect are not the same things... Before I endow you with respect, I should find out whether your curiosity is intellectual or merely morbid. Not that those who gawk at train derailments are so different from those who conduct autopsies; both want, at some level, to know what has happened, and, by extension, what will happen. Did the liver fail because of the decedent's alcoholism or was some toxin administered? If the deliverer is found, he or she may be imprisoned or, in more honest times, hanged, and thus pose no further threat. Or for the gawker at the accident, espying loose parts not unlike his or her own parts strewn amid wreckage may lead to a sense of awe at death's power, or horror at life's fragility, either of which may be instructive in any number of ways.

I’m going to take you someplace dark and damp where good people don’t go. I’m going to introduce you to monsters. Real ones. I’m going to tell you stories about hurting people, and if you like those stories, it means you’re bad.

You see why I’m such a good vampire? We’re all lying, devious bastards, not like werewolves, if there are werewolves, whose MO is, “Hi, I’m a werewolf, surprise! And fuck you!” No, we lurk. We’re lurkers.

a mundane lie hiding an exotic truth is deception an exotic lie hiding a mundane truth is storytelling, deception may be necessary to preserve life, but storytelling makes life worth living

The dead shouldn’t cry, not even the lesser dead.

We often live next to monsters unawares.

There comes a time when loneliness is stronger than fear.

I assume you are the sort of person who would go backstage after the opera in hopes of hearing the prima donna crying on the telephone, or walking in on the baritone fellating the basso buffo. I respect that-I was always the same way myself-though I suspect you are not very happy. Happiness is the province of those who ask few questions. I remember, even before this was visited upon me, how I envied those who eagerly did what they were told: those who married without complaint at father's behest; those who looked up rather than sideways in church; those, in short, who honestly believed in God, good kings, and righteous wars.

She was maybe fifty, mouse-brown hair, pretty once was my first thought, then I realized she was still pretty. I had just seen such ugly things that this cold loft with its naked brick and bare lightbulbs and a mattress on the floor with a pile of books for a nightstand was beautiful, and she was beautiful for making it that way and keeping it as nice as she could and for not having the heart to throw away the Gerber daisy wilting, already dropping petals from its place in the Coke bottle on the counter by the stove. And she was beautiful for wearing a raincoat with a sweater under it because that was all she had.

The dead shouldn’t cry, not even the lesser dead,

The suffering of others is easy enough to endure when it happens in the rearview mirror.

Still, you almost felt bad for Mark Hamill trying to be somebody besides Luke Skywalker. Fucking Star Wars.

You’d probably rather have a milk shake than a quart of blood, too, so we’ll have to agree to disagree.

The undead don’t care about careers. Vampires are all retirees.

I think the closest any of us may come to lasting happiness is in seeing to the needs of others; I think the same may be true for those who go in sunlight, though their lives are so short that many will not discover this in time.

He gets away with it because he's strong.' 'This is the story of mankind.' 'I thought you were going to be a priest at one point.' 'Yes. But then I read the newspaper.

A mundane lie hiding an exotic truth is deception; an exotic lie hiding a mundane truth is storytelling. Deception may be necessary to preserve life, but storytelling makes life worth living

The application of justice is a by-product of power. We look to leaders to protect us. We organize for collective defense. Or collective acquisition.

I enjoy cats,” the old lady said. “They sit on your lap and purr when it’s cold. It’s a great relief to loneliness. Do you have any idea what it’s like to know that you are unlikely to live more than a decade? To have survived all those who were familiar to you so that everyone is a stranger? To feel that you’re tedious to these strangers? But really, it’s the nearness of death, especially for a secular person. Cats help with that.

I need to talk to you more than you need me to leave you alone.

Envy and respect are not the same things.

Oh, would you look at this, now,” she said, pointing at a hole in her sage-green velvet couch. Never mind the brain and hair on it, she could clean those off with a stiff brush. And never mind the point-blank gunshot to the face she’d absorbed. It was the bullet hole in her couch that pissed her off.