Life, he realize, was much like a song. In the beginning there is mystery, in the end there is confirmation, but it's in the middle where all the emotion resides to make the whole thing worthwhile.
Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch or you might simply get covered in sap and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors where it is harder to get a splinter.
I wonder which is preferable, to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or to have them sucked out of you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of them, so at the end you're depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold, as close to you as your skin - everything that was of the deepest importance to you, everything that made you cringe and wish to conceal, everything that belonged to you alone - and must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind, an empty sack branded with a bright fluorescent label so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be inside you?
And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees like burning tears- the wind howls. Why must you mimic them?
Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red flag to a bu... was like putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it.
Watching a dog try to chew a large piece of toffee is a pastime fit for gods. Mr. Fusspot's mixed ancestry had given him a dexterity of jaw that was truly awesome. He somersaulted happily around the floor, making faces like a rubber gargoyle in a washing machine.
"You," Madeline said, her voice hollow and wheezing, "are like a bad case of herpes, wizard. You're inconvenient, embarassing, no real threat, and you simply go away."
"Asking an eight-year-old girl if something is a little over-the-top is like asking a Texan if there are too many jalapenos in the salsa. The answer is always no." -Liberty Jones"
If she were here I wouldn't be able to keep my hands off her. I would hold her so close she'd beg me to let her breathe. I'd kiss her so hard she'd plead for mercy. I'd unfasten her clothing and lie with her on that hard bed, and what was between us would be as far above the ordinary congress between man and woman as the stars are above their pale reflections in the lake below.
It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a doll's house. I thought that was silly as soon as I thought of it.
Deep in her soul, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she would gaze out over the solitude of her life with desperate eyes, seeking some white sail in the mists of the far-off horizon. She did not know what this chance event would be, what wind would drive it to her, what shore it would carry her to, whether it was a longboat or a three-decked vessel, loaded with anguish or filled with happiness up to the portholes. But each morning, when she awoke, she hoped it would arrive that day, and she would listen to every sound, spring to her feet, feel surprised that it had not come; then at sunset, always more sorrowful, she would wish the next day were already there.
Phyllida's hair was where her power resided. It was expensively set into a smooth dome, like a band shell for the presentation of that long-running act, her face.
...childlike wonder and awe have died. The scenery and poetry and music of the majesty of God have dried up like a forgotten peach at the back of the refrigerator.
... Ennis was back on his feet and somehow, as a coat hanger is straightened to open a locked car and then bent again to its original shape, they torqued things almost to where they had been, for what they'd said was no news. Nothing ended, nothing began, nothing resolved.
The purple, formalized, iridescent, gelatinous bladder of a Portuguese man-of-war was floating close beside the boat. It turned on its side and then righted itself. It floated cheerfully as a bubble with its long deadly purple filaments trailing a yard behind in the water.
The poems that used to entrance me in the days of Miss Violence now struck me as overdone and sickly. --the archaic language of unrequited love. I was irritated with such words, which rendered the unhappy lovers--I could now see--faintly ridiculous, like poor moping Miss Violence herself. Soft-edged, blurry, soggy, like a bun fallen into the water. Nothing you'd want to touch,
Even in dying, a Thennanin ship was reputed to be not worth putting out of its misery. In battle they were slow, unmaneuverable--and as hard to disable permanently as a cockroach.
I can't tell you--oh I can't tell you--how awful--how sort of unlivable--everything is now--like a great black wall in front of me--Something's got to smash.
I am gifted at blending myself into any given milieu--you've never seen such a typical California teenager as I was, nor such a dissolute and callous pre-med student--but somehow despite my efforts, I am never able to blend myself in entirely and remain in some respects quite distinct from my surroundings, in the same way that a green chameleon remains a distinct entity from the leaf upon which it sits, no matter how perfectly it has approximated the the subtleties of the particular shade.
I was confused by this sudden glare of attention; it was as if the characters in a favorite painting, absorbed in their own concerns, had looked up out of the canvas and spoken to me.
A haggard man used one of the huts as a home. He lay on a sagging mattress, his head on his pack, surrounded by rubbish - paper, porcelain shards, food remains and unidentifiable debris. His hand was over his eyes. He looked like a failed soldier. Dirt seemed so worked into him that the lines of his face were like writing.
He was waiting, I think, for me to cross that space and take him in my arms again--waiting, as one waits at a deathbed for the miracle one dare not disbelieve, which will not happen.
Night is brushed aside like so much cobweb. The day is wound up and begins even before the last haunted dreams, the last of the fog, those spectral and evanescent residues, have faded away.
On occasion I read Raymond Chandler although I have certain reservations about this author. Chandler, while obviously a master of his craft, makes overuse of simile, to my annoyance.