Status Updates From El invierno de mi desazón (...

“Being normal men, they surely did not consider it immoral. All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not.”

“I think what brought that back was the jets—all that enormous effort and time and money to stockpile all that death. Would we feel cheated if we never used it? We can shoot rockets into space but we can’t cure anger or discontent.”

“This may last all their lives while they learn to conceal it in a rose cloud of loving words. Give them their lunches, my sister, my wife—their hard-boiled eggs and pickles, their jelly-and-peanut-butter sandwiches, their red barrel-smelling apples, and turn them free in the world to spawn. And that’s just what she did. They walked away, carrying their paper bags, each one to a separate private world.”

“I call whatever happens in the Place “taking stock.” Some others might call it prayer, and maybe it would be the same thing. I don’t believe it’s thought. If I wanted to make a picture of it for myself, it would be a wet sheet turning and flapping in a lovely wind and drying and sweetening the white. What happens is right for me, whether or not it is good.”

“Men don’t get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared. I’m scared”