in the afternoon the sun came out, but the snow and wind kept on for a long time. finally the snow stopped and i lay in the tent watching the fly flap away from the tentwall in the gusts so that the wall became sublimely white and perfect for a moment before the fly’s writhing shadow lashed it; all day i watched the sun-play and felt that i needed no more.
her first puppet was a bird, a hand puppet with feathers and sequins, nothing like sabbath’s idea of a puppet. he explained that puppets were not for children; puppets did not say, “i am innocent and good.” they said the opposite. “i will play with you,” they said, “however i like.” she stood corrected, but that didn’t mean that, as a puppetmaker, she ever really stopped looking for the happiness that she’d known at seven, when she still had a mom and a dad and a childhood.
during the day, i’d run around attending to organizational duties. at night, i’d go to mcdonald’s, where i’d buy a small soda and sit and read until closing time at eleven. rode my bike home. made about a dozen phone calls to people on the club’s contact list. i avoided going home for fear of vaporizing in isolation.
ah shake off rents, he can go and kill himself with drugs. some fucking friends i have. spud, second prize, begbie, matty, tommy: these punters spell l-i-m-i-t-e-d. an extremely limited company.
“the boy who rode on slightly before him sat a horse not only as if he’d been born to it which he was but as if were he begot by malice or mischance into some queer land where horses never were he would have found them anyway.”
“for some time now i’ve had the feeling that novelists and terrorists are playing a zero-sum game.” “interesting. how so?” “what terrorists gain, novelists lose. the degree to which they influence mass consciousness is the extent of our decline as shapers of sensibility and thought. the danger they represent equals our own failure to be dangerous.”