I'm just kind of tired. Like a monkey in the rain.

I looked down at my hands. They were folded neatly together on the table like they belonged to someone else, as if someone had left their gloves behind and I had arranged them ready for collection.

A life to hold, or to see slip through uncaring and inattentive hands, but always a life. And given one, we wish for two, or three, or more, so easily forgetting the one we had was spent unwisely.

The city went on about its business. A new day would soon begin, and nothing so inconsequential as a death possessed the power to delay it. It was just a life, after all: no more, nor less than that.

We exist for ourselves, perhaps, and at times we even have a glimmer of who we are, but in the end we can never be sure, and as our lives go on, we become more and more opaque to ourselves, more and more aware of our own incoherence. No one can cross the boundary into another - for the simple reason that no one can gain access to himself.

4,3,5,7

He would've spit coffee into his mug, unbrushed his teeth, and put hair on his face with a razor.

..

I'd said "Dad?" backward, which would have sounded the same as "Dad" forward.

..

We Would have been safe.

5,6,8,3

If you imagine that getting high at a party and sleeping around is going to propel you into a state of full adulthood, that's like thinking that dessing up as an Indian is going to make you an Indian.

Pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.

The side whiskers indeed were quite handsome. But he stroked them so very zealously that looking at him, one might very well think that first just the side whiskers had been brought into the world, and then later the gentleman was attached to them in order to stroke them.

He stared at Avery's socks and felt an odd sense of wonder. Socks were so normal. So mundane. How could someone who pulled on socks in the morning be a serial killer? Socks were not hard or dangerous. Socks were funny; foot mittens, that's what socks were. They made a knobbly hinge of your toes and became comical sock-puppets. Surely anyone who wore socks could not truly be a threat to him or anyone else?

'Heil Hitler,' he said, which, he presumed, was another way of saying, 'Well, goodbye for now, have a pleasant afternoon.'

'The people I see from my window. In the huts, in the distance. They're all dressed the same.' 'Ah, those people,' said Father, nodding his head and smiling slightly. 'Those people...well, they're not people at all, Bruno.' Bruno frowned. 'They're not?' he asked, unsure what Father meant by that.

I kiss the right and say, "Bye-bye." I kiss the left twice because it was always creamier.

Driving home I see the playground but it's all wrong, the swings are on the opposite side. "Oh, Jack, that's a different one," says Grandma. There's playgrounds in every town." Lots of the world seems to be a repeat.

But I go back down near the water with Steppa to look for treasure. We find a white shell like a snail, but when I curl my finger inside, he's gone out. "Keep it," say Steppa. "But what about when he comes home?"

I wanted to be one of those people who have streaks to maintain, who scorch the ground with their intensity. But for now, at least I knew such people, and they needed me, just like comets need tails.

Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.

I looked up from the street and again at the wretched captives. I vowed not to let the noises of the city drown out their voices or rob me of my past. It was less painful to forget, but I would look and I would remember.