Damon’s Reviews > King Sorrow > Status Update

She had a smell like someone had squirted perfume on the dumpster behind a Hooters.

"The human carcass is a sheath and every soul a sword. You already have the blade you need."

It was Donna who she pitied most. Donna, who would never get even with a world that kept taking good people away from her, destroying them before her eyes. She was not furious because she hated.

She was furious because she loved.

"Everyone dies," Donna said. "It's just a question of when and how ugly."

Allie had begun to crawl. "Where do you think you're going, bitch?" Horation pressed the barrel against the back of her skull. "There's nowhere to run to, and no heroes left."

"It's the red backdrop of American life. The slave labor in Indonesia that made your sneakers. The miner dying of black lung so we can turn on the lights. The construction worker who fell off a high girder so the World Trade towers could kiss the sky. Because we care about each other, we make peace with a certain level of horror."

He loved it, had always loved it, the way an ancient word felt in the brain, in the mouth. Heartache was an okay word, but bitre breostcaere-- bitter breast-care-- caught at something else, something more deeply felt, from a time when people lived in their bodies, not in their heads.