11 quotes found
“The luxury of being half-asleep, exploring the fringes of psychosis in safety.”
“You can tell a lot from a person's nails. When a life starts to unravel, they're among the first to go.”
“Or he was simply pretendinglike many drinkers, he liked to think each new day drew a line under the day before.”
“Sex is a different medium, refracting time and sense, a biological hyperspace as remote from conscious existence as dreams, or as water is from air”
“He's never quite got the trick of conversation, tending to hear in dissenting views, however mild, a kind of affront, an invitation to mortal combat.”
“There's a taste in the air, sweet and vaguely antiseptic, that reminds him of his teenage years in these streets, and of a general state of longing, a hunger for life to begin that from this distan...”
“It troubles him to consider the powerful currents and fine-tuning that alter fate, the close and distant influences, the accidents of character and circumstance.”
“Becoming drunk is a journey that generally elates him in the early stageshe's good company, expansive, mischievous and fun, the famous old poet, almost as happy listening as talking. But once the d...”
“Especially difficult when the first and best unconscious move of a dedicated liar is to persuade himself he's sincere. And once he's sincere, all deception vanishes.”
“It's at moments like these in a game that the essentials of his character are exposed: narrow, ineffectual, stupidand morally so. The game becomes an extended metaphor of character defect. Every er...”
“It's the essence of a degenerating mind periodically, to lose all sense of continuous self, and therefore any regard for what others think of your lack of continuity.”