Quotes from Randall Silvis

Behind him, the lights of Erie appeared to be underwater now, a twinkling city sinking into an indigo sea.

useful knowledge was to be acquired only by doing, by living, by running headlong into the burning house of human experience and coming out singed and scorched, lungs full of smoke. Such knowledge would arise not during but after the experience, when you are sitting alone in the dark and re-creating everything you did and felt and assessing the wisdom or foolishness of each moment, the penalties and rewards.

Reading...can make you fell like not one lone cell stranded in the desolation of the world, but one of eight billion cells conjoined by the world, all hearts echoing the others in the song of one enormous heart.

Spin and die, To live again a butterfly.

The Name of the Rose and J. M. Synge's Riders to the Sea?

Huston conducted all of his relationships from a solid center, from within the stabilizing orbit of his family, always venturing out from and returning to family, with his every action and reaction synchronized with family first, family last, family always, whereas DeMarco, on the other hand, had no center. He ventured out to the other relationships from emptiness, and to emptiness he returned. Every action synchronized with nothing. Emptiness first, emptiness last, emptiness always.

Personally, I've come to believe that theories are of small value when it comes to actually living your life, to making all the hard decisions you have to make and then dealing with the consequences of those decisions.

People don't have to be perfect for you to love them," he said. "You understand what I'm saying? Sometimes you love them because they aren't perfect. You love them for their imperfections . . .

We are all made up," he answered aloud. "We are only real at night.

Laying another log on the fire of failure

There is a significant difference between feeling like a failure and admitting failure. The first can be a driving force; the second is the relinquishment of all effort, and therefore all hope. DeMarco understood this in his bones but had never articulated it to himself or anybody else. It had taken Thomas Huston to put it into words for him. They had been sitting on

Because poets and pretty, young things still believe in romance. They still believe that truth heals and beauty sutures. They still believe that love forestalls, deters, and turns away the tragedy that is life.

Beckett's famous existential cry at the end of The Unnamable, which he now quoted aloud, just as he had many times throughout his life: "'You must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.

sober as a corpse, I used to tell him.

Evil exists, boy," he told patient Hero, "and it will always exist in abundance, if only to give the good an opportunity to shine." He scratched Hero's skull. "Truth #4.

recognize their own vituperous thought shaming.

simply being laconic.

Nathan said, "Not a chance. I've heard him recite it in class. He knows dozens of Poe's poems by heart. 'The Raven,' 'Lenore,' 'The Lake,' 'To Annie'…dozens of them. Sometimes I think he fucking channels Poe.

Hard times destroy the weak and strengthen the strong. Soft times weaken everyone.

and could hear her susurrus breath sounding like leaves stirring

the dead leaves blowing about his legs like brittle, papery demons sucked dry of all power, impuissant and doomed to crumble.

He sagged against the tree, clung to it, pushed hard against the horrible images while he chanted to the bark, She is a dark-haired woman, green eyed and dusky with secrets. Her mouth is sensuous but sad, limbs long and elegant, every movement languid…

It was a kind of Occam's razor for law enforcement that adultery explained nearly everything. Infidelity. Lust. Stupidity and weakness.

The avidity with which we thieve and kill and ruin one another! The flesh is undeserving of the souls with