I had to keep acting deaf if I wanted to hear at all. I lay in bed the night before the fishing trip and thought it over, about my being deaf, about the years of not letting on I heard what was said, and I wondered if I could ever act any other way again. But I remembered one thing: it wasn't me that started acting deaf; it was people that first started acting like I was too dumb to hear or see or say anything at all.

Hell of a life. Damed if you do and damned if you don't. Puts a man in one confounded bind, I'd say.

He said he even wished everybody in the world looked exactly alike. He said you'd keep thinking everybody you met was your wife or your mother or father, and people would always be throwing their arms around each other wherever they went, and it would look "very nice".

The human voice conspires to desecrate everything on earth.

Merriage partners are to serve each other. Elevate, help, teach, strengthen each other, but above all, serve. Raise their children honorably, lovingly, and with detachment. A child is a guest in the house, to be loved and respected - never possessed.

I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.

Jeg gikk inn i huset og trakk for gardinene, men duften av vår klarte jeg ikke å stenge ute. Den var overalt, og det eneste den fikk meg til å tenke på, var forråtnelse. Jeg satt bak fortrukne gardiner og forbannet våren og alt den brakte med seg. Det var et tungt, gnagende hat som kom langt innefra. Aldri noen gang hadde jeg hatet noe så sterkt og intenst.

Disse absurde fortellingene, skrevet for mer enn tusen år siden, virker mye nærere og mer levende enn alle de ansiktsløse menneskene som travet rundt på stasjonsområdene. Hvorfor er det sånn? Jeg synes det er rart.

Folk har sine egne grunner til å dø. Det kan se enkelt ut, men er det aldri. Det er akkurat som en rot. Det som syns over bakken, er bare en liten del av den. Men hvis du begynner å trekke, kommer det opp mer og mer. Menneskesinnet har tilhold dypt i mørket. Bare vedkommende selv vet den egentlige grunnen, og kanskje ikke det engang.

Utmattelse skjeler ikke til alder eller skjønnhet. I så måte er den lik regn og jordskjelv og hagl og oversvømmelser.

Don’t pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it’d lose even its imperfection.

they haven’t come for me yet with their badges and their rules and their numb ears. oh, them and their caprice! like the fox I run with the hunted and if I’m not the happiest man on earth I’m surely the luckiest man alive.

"Well, if Sven dreamed tonight that his dog died, he'd have a very, very bad night's sleep, because he's very fond of that dog. But when he woke up in the morning, everything would be all right. He'd know it was only a dream." Nicholson nodded. "What's the point exactly?" "The point is if his dog really died, it would be exactly the same thing. Only he wouldn't wake up till he died himself."

I was a child and she was a child , In this kingdom by the sea ; But we loved with a love that was more than love - I and my Annabel Lee

I saw it, in my head, as the mask of the whiskey gentry - a pretentious mix of booze, failed dreams, and a terminal identity crisis; the inevitable result of too much inbreeding in a closed and ignorant culture.

And unlike most of the others in the press box, we didn't give a hoot in hell what was happening on the track. We had come to watch the real beasts perform.

Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.

It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.

He hated it when you called him a moron. All morons hate it when you call them a moron.

Just because they're crazy about themself, they think you're crazy about them, too, and that you're just dying to do them a favor. It's sort of funny, in a way.