Vineland
by
The house was so old that all of its termite clauses and code violations had been waived, on the theory that the next moderate act of nature would finish it off.
“In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden-the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain”
― The Brothers Karamazov
― The Brothers Karamazov
“IN THE DAWN there is a man progressing over the plain by means of holes which he is making in the ground. He uses an implement with two handles and he chucks it into the hole and he enkindles the stone in the hole with his steel hole by hole striking the fire out of the rock which God has put there. On the plain behind him are the wanderers in search of bones and those who do not search and they move haltingly in the light like mechanisms whose movements are monitored with escapement and pallet so that they appear restrained by a prudence or reflectiveness which has no inner reality and they cross in their progress one by one that track of holes that runs to the rim of the visible ground and which seems less the pursuit of some continuance than the verification of a principle, a validation of sequence and causality as if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it there on that prairie upon which are the bones and the gatherers of bones and those who do not gather. He strikes fire in the hole and draws out his steel. Then they all move on again.”
― Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
― Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
“Dropping into a thorn bush can lead to no end of grief.”
― Prince of Fools
― Prince of Fools
“The tinker in his burial tree was a wonder to the birds. The vultures that came by day to nose with their hooked beaks among his buttons and pockets like outrageous pets soon left him naked of his rags and flesh alike. Black mandrake sprang beneath the tree as it will where the seed of the hanged falls and in spring a new branch pierced his breast and flowered in a green boutonnière perennial beneath his yellow grin. He took the sparse winter snows upon what thatch of hair still clung to his dried skull and hunters that passed that way never chanced to see him brooding among his barren limbs. Until wind had tolled the thinker's bones and seasons loosed them one by one to the ground below and his bleached and weathered brisket hung in that lonesome wood like a bone birdcage.”
― Outer Dark
― Outer Dark
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