Jesteśmy społecznością, która kocha książki

To, co brzydkie, czasem może być piękne. To, co ładne, nigdy.

One day you realise you will never leave your country ever again. Another day you realise you will never leave this city ever again. Another day it’s the house that holds you fast. Days later, a room. A bed. You will never leave this bed. You turn to find your final position. Now, all there is left to leave is this life. And all that remains of its grand ambitions is a fragment of desire to die in reasonable health.

Rozlega się delikatne stukanie do drzwi szafy.
- Hector - szepcze Myers - wyłaź stąd.
- Nie mogę - odszeptuję. - Jestem w szafie.
- Właśnie, Hector. Wyjdź z tej pieprzonej szafy. Wszyscy pytają, gdzie się podziałeś. Nie mogę powiedzieć, że chowasz się w szafie. (...)
- Powiedz im, że jestem chory.
- Hector, oni wszyscy doskonale wiedzą, że jesteś chory. Na umyśle. Ale to cię nie usprawiedliwia. Masz wyjść z szafy i rozmawiać z gośćmi.
- Odwróć ich uwagę.
(...)
- Hector, wyłaź! - warczy Myers. - Gadam do szafy! Ludzie dziwnie się na mnie patrzą.
- Joe, ubrałeś się w żółty garnitur. Wyglądasz jak papuga! Dlatego tak na ciebie patrzą.

Może już po mnie. Może wolno zajrzeć w przyszłość tylko wtedy, gdy nas ona nie dotyczy. Może w pewnym momencie oglądanie przyszłości się nudzi i człowiek błaga, by mógł zobaczyć przeszłość. Taka niedzielna rozpusta: trzy godziny oglądania przeszłości za tydzień widzenia przyszłości. Raz w tygodniu, co niedzielę - i tak przez całą wieczność.

About a mile from home, she rode through a red light and suddenly, out of nowhere it seemed, a police car pulled out of a side street and blocked her path and the window came down and a mean-looking woman with tight brown hair like a thrift-shop bonnet told her that she’d seen what she’d done, that she shouldn’t have done it, and not to do it again, and when Betty said sorry and promised she would never, the woman leaned a little further out of the window, and the man in the seat beside her leaned over to see, and the mean woman said, ‘Because you will die.’ Emphasising ‘will’. ‘You will die,’ she repeated.

After his lunch of burnt lamb, cabbage and corn, he turned out the bathroom light, curled up on his side on the tiled floor and spoke with his wife, who, being dead, listened closely.

For so much of their married life they had spoken in this absurd fashion – face to face, far apart, different towns, countries, continents – until it became as natural to them as any other unnatural thing. Before life-size screens, upon candlelit tables, they would eat the same meals and talk for hours, hardly aware at all that they were not really, not actually, not physically together. When they were done, they would say good day or night, blow a fond kiss, blow out the candle and with a light tap of the finger turn each other off. Leaving one alone in the room, as one had always been, of course.

In her time in the theatre, Betty had grown accustomed to a restless and peripatetic existence. To making and shedding friends at short notice, and in time turning those friends into acquaintances and those acquaintances into strangers; to moving into and out of distant towns and rooms and keeping one’s eye fixed always on the next town, the next room. She’d grown accustomed to living with, around, beneath and inside other people. And she’d learned to let go of those odd, strangely clothed, strangely conflicted, complicated souls once they’d done what they had been created to do and everybody had made good use of them.

Zjawił się ubrany w czerwony skórzany płaszczyk - a może marynarkę? Nieważne, jak się toto nazywa, grunt, że ma pasek, a Lenny wygląda w tym jak debil.

In the green-walled vestibule he found the portrait of a young girl he had once loved, and though she had lived far away – upon a mountain apparently, in another century – it was to her he would nightly unburden his soul.

Rosa uśmiecha się i spuszcza oczy. Bez wątpienia nie jest to pierwszy komplement, jaki usłyszała. O jej doświadczeniu w przyjmowaniu takich hołdów świadczy jej automatyczna, dopracowana w najdrobniejszych szczegółach reakcja. Uśmiecha się, pochyla głowę i wpatruje w podłogę. W ten sposób odsłania umysł bez ciężaru oczu i staje się jeszcze piękniejsza. Nie ma bowiem nic piękniejszego na tym świecie od przelotnego poczucia winy udającego niewinność. A może tylko ja tak to odbieram.

Before now Jack had only heard of sex; he had no concept of what it really looked like. He had seen topless women in tabloid newspapers, and the occasional bottomless woman in magazines found near the railway lines. But none of these girls were having sex; they were only showing you the bits they had sex with. But when it came to intercourse, which was what Jack assumed was going on here, he was clueless. His first impression was that it looked far more painful than he’d imagined. His second impression was that it made him want to cry and cry and cry. And so he walked himself away from it, blocking his ears, chewing on his cheeks, sliding his socks across the wood all the way to his room, throwing himself down onto the bed, almost within the bed, there to live inside in the dark with the bugs and the springs.

Żałuję, że ta parka nie została w klopie chwilkę dłużej. Pięć lat. To by mnie urządzało.

...wernisaż diabli wzięli. (...) Przybycie policji wypłoszyło ciekawskich. Zostali tylko bliscy, alkoholik i najwytrwalsi oraz najwytrwalsi bliscy alkoholika.