Monster

“I am resentful, I feel fatherless again, a whole new wave of fatherlessness, that they have gone so suddenly, as if there was no history of our life together in the gang, as if discourse is an illusion, and the sequence of this happened and then that happened and I said and he said was only Death’s momentary incredulity, Death staying his hand a moment in incredulity of our arrogance, that we actually believed ourselves to consequentially exist, as if we were something that did not snuff out from one instant to the next, leaving nothing of ourselves as considerable as a thread of smoke, or the resolved silence at the end of a song.”
― E.L. Doctorow, Billy Bathgate

“Tis the opinion of myself, Sanderson Pratt, who sets this down, that the educational system of the United States should be in the hands of the weather bureau. I can give you good reasons for it; and you can’t tell me why our college professors shouldn’t be transferred to the meteorological department.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“The phone call ended, and we all started laughing. First they got their ideas about how to light a cross from a James Bond movie, and now they were bragging about secret handshakes. It was as if Dennis the Menace were running a hate group.”
― Ron Stallworth, Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime

“When the haughty Mussolini rose to deliver a speech, the main piazza was empty except for a collection of seedy beggars and village idiots collected by the mayor. At a reception in another town, despite the vigilance of his bodyguards, the Mafia managed to steal Mussolini’s hat.”
― Selwyn Raab, Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires