Joel Verkler

“While an elderly man in his mid-eighties looks curiously at a porno site, his grandson asks him from afar, “‘What are you reading, grandpa?’” “‘It’s history, my boy.’” “The grandson comes nearer and exclaims, “‘But this is a porno site, grandpa, naked chicks, sex . . . a lot of sex!’” “‘Well, it’s sex for you, my son, but for me it’s history,’ the old man says with a sigh.” All of people in the cabin burst into laughter. “A stale joke, but a cool one,” added William More, the man who just told the joke. The navigator skillfully guided the flying disc among the dense orange-yellow blanket of clouds in the upper atmosphere that they had just entered. Some of the clouds were touched with a brownish hue at the edges. The rest of the pilots gazed curiously and intently outwards while taking their seats. The flying saucer descended slowly, the navigator’s actions exhibiting confidence. He glanced over at the readings on the monitors below the transparent console: Atmosphere: Dense, 370 miles thick, 98.4% nitrogen, 1.4% methane Temperature on the surface: ‒179°C / ‒290°F Density: 1.88 g/cm³ Gravity: 86% of Earth’s Diameter of the cosmic body: 3200 miles / 5150 km.”
― Todor Bombov, Homo Cosmicus 2: Titan: A Science Fiction Novel

“As Miss Golightly was saying, before she was so rudely interrupted...”
― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories

“fast. Get those months, days, hours, minutes out of the way, it can’t be quick enough.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“The man who has never desired or experienced anything base and bad is not a man of restraint, because he has never had to master anything to compose himself.”
― Robin Waterfield, The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and Sophists