The Night in Question

I'm a survivor, " I said. But I didn't think that claim would carry much weight in an obituary.

The bullet is already in the brain; it won’t be outrun forever, or charmed to a halt. In the end it will do its work and leave the troubled skull behind, dragging its comet’s tail of memory and hope and talent and love into the marble hall of commerce.

He did not remember when everything began to remind him of something else.

Nor did Anders remember seeing a woman leap to her death from the building opposite his own just days after his daughter was born. He did not remember shouting, “Lord have mercy!” He did not remember deliberately crashing his father’s car in to a tree, of having his ribs kicked in by three policemen at an anti-war rally, or waking himself up with laughter. He did not remember when he began to regard the heap of books on his desk with boredom and dread, or when he grew angry at writers for writing them. He did not remember when everything began to remind him of something else.

The bullet is already in the brain; it won't be outrun forever, or charmed to a halt. In the end it will do its work and leave the troubled skull behind, dragging its comet's tail of memory and hope and talent and love into the marble hall of commerce. That can't be helped. But for now Anders can still make time

Getting from La Jolla to Alta Vista State Hospital isn't easy, unless you have a car or a breakdown. April's Father had a breakdown and they got him there in no time.

But for now Anders can still make time. Time for the shadows to lengthen on the grass, time for the tethered dog to bark at the flying ball, time for the boy in right field to smack his sweat-blackened mitt and softly chant, They is, they is, they is.

Reasons always came with a purpose, to give the appearance of a struggle between principle and desire. But there’d been no struggle. Principle had power only until you found what you had to have.

Most of our desires are clichés, right? Ready to wear, one size fits all. I doubt if it’s even possible to have an original desire anymore.

Because she had been involved with other people , and other people muddied the water.

Whatever people gave you from their overflowing hearts they remembered, and expected you to remember, forever.

Anders turns and looks at him. He wants to hear Coyle's cousin repeat what he's just said, but he knows better than to ask. The others will think he's being a jerk, ragging the kid for his grammar. But that isn't it, not at all - it's that Anders is strangely roused, elated, by those final two words, their pure unexpectedness and their music. He takes the field in a trance, repeating them to himself.

One day you’re sitting in front of your house poking sticks into an anthill, hearing the chink of silverware and the voices of your mother and father in the kitchen; then, at some moment you can’t even remember, one of those voices is gone. And you never hear it again. When you go from today to tomorrow you’re walking into an ambush.

O for a beakerful of the warm South!

Someday Miller is going to die. He knows that and he prides himself on knowing it when everyone else only pretends to, secretly believing that they will live forever.....A simple truth . His mother is also going to die . Just like him. And there is no telling when.

There is only one thing you have to know about the future: everything gets worse.

It was good to be alone. Really alone, without other people around you to let you imagine that your life had mingled with theirs. But that never was true. Even together, people were as solitary as cows in a field chewing their own cud.

Because they were alone. In fact everyone was alone all the time, but when you got sick you knew it, and that was a lot of what suffering was-knowing.