Carl

“I was standing in front of Worden’s market. I looked across the street to Charlie’s bar. I was thinking about going in to see if there might be a mid-day drunk sitting on a barstool to talk with to help me feel like I was back on the honest side of life. Maybe one who would tell stories about working in the woods or highway crews. Someone I could swap some truths with. But perhaps what would have helped me the most would have been a drug dealer. Someone I could have secretly observed working his trade, watched how the exchange of palmed cash for little baggies of heroin transpired. Maybe that would have given me clues about how the more experienced criminals moved and breathed and managed to spend their non-sleeping hours without collapsing.”
― Steve S. Saroff, Paper Targets: Art Can Be Murder

“I threw both my phones in, one after the other. The splashing sounds they made in the dark were like two trout rising for stoneflies. Trout that sleep in the eddies behind round river boulders. Trout that wake up at dawn and hide all day by pretending to be shadows.”
― Steve S. Saroff, Paper Targets: Art Can Be Murder

“We have no choice other than to become veterans of time, but is it wrong to hold onto the sparks even if they still burn?”
― Steve S. Saroff, Paper Targets: Art Can Be Murder

“But someone who has been busted broke, if they can take care of themselves from that point, they act different. They build their own fires.”
― Steve S. Saroff, Paper Targets: Art Can Be Murder