Rand Nix

“Once, over dinner, Henry was quite startled to learn from me that men had walked on the moon. “No,” he said, putting down his fork. “It’s true,” chorused the rest, who had somehow managed to pick this up along the way. “I don’t believe it.” “I saw it,” said Bunny. “It was on television.” “How did they get there? When did this happen?”).”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Trees, thirty feet tall and black now, are planted in strict order along the avenues and main boulevards leading into and out of downtown. None of them bloom or grow anymore and some have fallen over, tumbling part way, leaning to the side, their massive roots exposed, black now too, and as I walk I touch my hand against each tree. The trunks are smooth, almost slick, as if they’ve been varnished and preserved. It’s a vision of a quiet Armageddon, or an emptied wasteland following a chemical attack. But this is only the wasteland of abuse and inattention.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“There is, among us sitting on the stage and among the people in the South End who have forgotten about this place and among even the people living here, including the few of them sitting in this room, there is not just an absence of money. There is an absence of will. Desire. Need. And without those things,” she says, sitting forward, “this place will not ever change. Accept that. Because without it, this is how life here will always be.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“In any event, he has traded power for a clean conscience and ended up with neither.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge