Job had been paying no attention to me, but he looked up when I rose. "Do you still want to go there?" he asked, gesturing toward the charred signboard. "It won't do any good. You can't escape."
"I know." I spoke as quietly as he. "I'm just going toward something before it comes and gets me."

-John Myers Myers, Silverlock

this was the first tmg song i ever heard.
what a spaz he is!! i love it.

moment, 3:31

Sarah Vowell's 'Take the Cannoli'

There are lots of ways that lives are pummeled by history.

-"What I See When I Look at the Face on the $20 Bill"


When I think about my relationship with America, I feel like a battered wife: Yeah, he knocks me around a lot, but boy, he sure can dance.

-"What I See When I Look at the Face on the $20 Bill"


Heaven, such as it is, is right here on earth. Behold: my revelation: I stand at the door in the morning, and lo, there is a newspaper, in sight like unto an emerald. And holy, holy, holy is the coffee, which was, and is, and is to come. And hark, I hear the voice of an angel round about the radio, saying, "Since my baby left me I found a new place to dwell." And lo, after this I behold a great multitude, which no man could number, of shoes. And after these things I will hasten unto a taxicab and to a theater, where a ticket will be given unto me, and lo, it will be a matinee, a film that doeth great wonders. And when it is finished, the heavens will open, and out will cometh a rain fragrant as myrrh, and yea, I have an umbrella.

-"The End is Near, Nearer, Nearest"

We will grow older, both of us, you can see it in our faces already, in the bathroom mirror, for instance, mornings when we use the bathroom at the same time. And certain things around us will change, become easier or harder, one thing or the other, but nothing will ever really be any different. I believe that. We have made our decisions, our lives have been set in motion, and they will go on and on until they stop. But if that is true, then what? I mean, what if you believe that, but you keep it covered up, until one day something happens that should change something, but then you see nothing is going to change after all. What then? Meanwhile, the people around you continue to talk and act as if you were the same person as yesterday, or last night, or five minutes before, but you are really undergoing a crisis, your heart feels damaged. . . .

-Raymond Carver, "So Much Water So Close To Home"

The band was playing one of those songs of Hank Williams, the one about the wild side of life, and the music floated over the car tops and touched me. I felt lost from everybody, and from myself included, laying on a wagon sheet in a pasture-land of cars. Only the tune of the song reached me, but the tune was enough. It fit the night and the country and the way I was feeling, and fit them better than anything I knew. What few stories the dancing people had to tell were already told in the worn-out words of songs like that one, and their kind of living, the few things they knew and lived to a fare-thee-well were in the sad high tune. City people probably wouldn't believe there were folks simple enough to live their lives out on sentiments like those--but they didn't know. Laying there, thinking of all the things the song brought up in me, I got more peaceful. The words I knew of it, about the wild side of life, reminded me of Hud and Lily, but more than that, the whole song reminded me of Hermy and Buddy and the other boys I knew. All of them wanted more and seemed to end up with less; they wanted excitement and ended up stomped by a bull or smashed against a highway; or they wanted a girl to court; and anyway, whatever it was they wanted, that was what they ended up doing without. That song ended, and another one began, and it ended and then I got up and went back into the dark arena.

-Larry McMurtry, Horseman, Pass By


The way things happened, one thing after another, it seemed like time went by so fast you couldn't tell if you were young or old.

-Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood


It is hardly surprising if we are driven by blasts of storms when our chief aim on this sea of life is to displease wicked men.

-Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy


If the enjoyment of any earthly blessing brings with it any measure of happiness, the memory of that splendid day can never be destroyed by the burden however great of growing evil.

-Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy


It is the nature of human affairs to be fraught with anxiety; they never prosper perfectly and they never remain constant.

-Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy


In all adversity of fortune, the most wretched kind is once to have been happy.

-Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

In the big empty office the man and the woman at looking at each other and they were a good deal alike. Their bodies were different, as were also the color of their eyes, the length of their noses, and the circumstances of their existence, but something inside them meant the same thing, wanted the same release, would have left the same impression on the memory of an onlooker. Later, and when he grew older and married a young wife, the doctor often talked to her of the hours spent with the sick woman and expressed a good many things he had been unable to express to Elizabeth. He was almost a poet in his old age and his notion of what happened took a poetic turn. "I had come to the time in my life when prayer became necessary and so I invented gods and prayed to them," he said. "I did not say my prayers in words nor did I kneel down but sat perfectly still in my chair. In the late afternoon when it was hot and quiet on Main Street or in the winter when the days were gloomy, the gods came into the office and I thought no one knew about them. Then I found that this woman Elizabeth knew, that she worshipped also the same gods. I have a notion that she came to the office because she thought the gods would be there but she was happy to find herself not alone just the same. It was an experience that cannot be explained, although I suppose it is always happening to men and women in all sorts of places."

-Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio

a favorite of mine

Memoir

Orwell says somewhere that no one ever writes the real story of their life.
The real story of a life is the story of its humiliations.
If I wrote that story now -
radioactive to the end of time -
people, I swear, your eyes would fall out, you couldn’t peel
the gloves fast enough
from your hands scorched by the firestorms of that shame.
Your poor hands. Your poor eyes
to see me weeping in my room
or boring the tall blonde to death.
Once I accused the innocent.
Once I bowed and prayed to the guilty.
I still wince at what I once said to the devastated widow.
And one October afternoon, under a locust tree
whose blackened pods were falling and making
illuminated patterns on the pathway,
I was seized by joy,
and someone saw me there,
and that was the worst of all,
lacerating and unforgettable.

-Vijay Seshadri

In the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were the truths and they were all beautiful.
The old man had listed hundreds of the truths in his book. I will not try to tell you all of them. There was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of carelessness and abandon. Hundreds and hundreds were the truths and they were all beautiful.
And then the people came along. Each as he appeared snatched up one of the truths and some who were quite strong snatched up a dozen of them.
It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth became a falsehood.

-Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio

It's just so wonderful.