The Brooklyn Follies
Quotes from the Book
I walk around the world like a ghost, and sometimes I question whether I even exist. Whether I've ever existed at all.
The pictures do not lie, but neither do they tell the whole story. They are merely a record of time passing, the outward evidence.
Would it not be better to learn the truth once and for all instead of living in a state of perpetual uncertainty?
So it goes as I work my way down the page, and each cluster of marks is a word, and each word is a sound in my head, and each time I write another word, I hear the sound of my own voice, even though my lips are silent.
Without him, we are nothing, but the paradox is that we, the figments of another mind, will outlive the mind that made us, for once we are thrown into the world, we continue to exist forever, and our stories go on being told, even after we are dead.
I am a man, not an angel, and if the grief that overtook me occasionally blurred my vision and led to certain lapses of conduct, that in no way should cast doubt on the truth of my story. Before anyone tries to discredit me by pointing to those stains on my record, I come forward of my own free will and openly pronounce my guilt to the world. These are treacherous times, and I know how easily perceptions can be twisted by a single word spoken into the wrong ear.
Mr. Blank's old friend is acting up again, and because our hero is no longer wearing the cotton trousers and underpants and is quite naked under the pajama bottoms, there is no barrier to prevent Mr. Bigshot from bounding out through the slit and poking his head into the light of day.
In spite of his physical efforts, he understands that he is afraid to go on reading the typescript. Why this fear should have taken hold of him is something he cannot account for. It’s only words, he tells himself, and since when have words had the power to frighten a man half to death?
These are treacherous times, and I know how easily perceptions can be twisted by a single word spoken into the wrong ear. Impugn a man's character, and everything that man does is made to seem underhanded, suspect, fraught with double motives.
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Molloy
The Untouchable
Invitation to a Beheading
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The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
The Complete Stories
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The Dream of Perpetual Motion
The Blindfold
The Unnamable
The Book of Illusions
Mirror Mirror
Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
The Black Obelisk
An Instance of the Fingerpost
The Complete Short Stories
Lord Jim
Collected Fictions
The Story of a New Name
The Stone Diaries
The Secret Scripture
The Manual of Detection
Anil's Ghost
The Third Policeman
Sexing the Cherry
Without Dogma
A Scanner Darkly
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The Beginning of Everything
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances
The Shock of the Fall
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Biography of X
Light in August
The Ghost Writer
The Archived
Just After Sunset
My Friends
Flights
Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings
Mao II
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
Alias Grace
Six Characters in Search of an Author
The Empusium
The Fall of Babel
Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable
Warlight
The Angel's Game
Burial Rites
The Toll
Invisible Man
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
The Tunnel
The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep
The Invention of Solitude
Golden State

