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“He opened the door wearing an oversized wife-beater and dirty trunks to match. Funny, but he recognized me withouta struggle. Immediately, I assumed he was sober, which was a good thing. Yet, seeing me wasn’t expected or desired. For sure, I was the last person on his list of surprises. Jerry adjusted his head and sharpened his bloodshot eyes. It wasthen his booze-bated breath greeted me well before he did. Ok, he was in a stupor or maybe on the rebound. Next, soiled diapers stole the little oxygen I had left—and I was still OUTDOORS.
Yet somehow, I mustered enough wind to greet my brother. I tried to beat him to the punch and said, “What’s up bruh?� What happened next stomped my soul me for years to come! He never bothered to truly acknowledge me. Yet, heresponded without hesitation, “You know I can’t have

any company!” Then he violently slammed the door shut! Jerry was gone! I couldn’t differentiate
from being stupid or dumbstruck. I just stood silent on his porch all alone for about five minutes. I’d dealt with Jerry’s nastiness many times before. But he would initially warm up before dropping his hammer. Without a doubt, l was lost, confused, and bewildered like a teen-age boy losing a prom date. Foolishly, I used logic to dissect my embarrassment.
First, the guy scolded me as if I should’ve known better! To be fair, Jerry was the breadwinner. His wife left him years ago. That part I understood. Only a fool would have hung around his crazy ass. It was amazing they got together, let alone stayed that way long enough to create those children. Yet, all his kids were pushing the ages of twenty andabove. What the hell did he mean, “I can’t receive any company!” Of course, I heard those crying babies which madehim a granddaddy. That was strangely obvious to his existence. Yes, the cycle continues!
Second, I really didn’t care to go inside. I didn’t want to be in his business. I just wanted his input on Aunt Kathy’s memorial.”
― Harold Phifer, My Bully, My Aunt, & Her Final Gift

“Charley threw Cindy on the bed and pulled a switchblade knife. He pressed the release button and a five-inch blade flipped open. “One word to anybody and your ugly dog gets his throat cut!”
― Shafter Bailey, Cindy Divine: The Little Girl Who Frightened Kings

“I stood up to go shake hands with him and I don’t remember anything else. What I do recall is the crowd yelling and me crying, while everything seemed to be moving in slow motion.”
― Vernon Davis, Playing Ball: Life Lessons from My Journey to the Super Bowl and Beyond

“Love was the quiet hum of a lullaby slipping pas sleeping ears on a late November evening.”
― J. Rose Black

“That noise you are hearing, drowning out
the blows of life, is the wind touching the fronds of the thirty or so eighty-foot-tall palm trees encircling the centrally located swimming pool. You have fun thinking this sound might be the Holy Spirit.”
― Tom Hillman, Digging for God

“A shaft of moonlight illuminated a row of sentinel silver birch in a phosphorescent glow, appearing almost ethereal in the relative surrounding gloom. Boris had stopped again, his silhouette a stark black juxtaposition against the background of illuminated branches.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“Ala Moire let out a scream of agony, but as he fell he released a flame of white from his open hand. Armon was engulfed in a white brilliance and experienced a pain he had never felt before in all his dark life. His black robes fell to the floor, and the tattoos on his face faded to grey. Then Armon dissolved in a sheet of white, gone to join his ancestors.”
― Robert Reid, White Light Red Fire

“Buying loyalty can be as effective as fear when one’s rival is poorer than oneself.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“I have watched people come to revival meetings burdened, broken, and hopeless, and then leave completely transformed. The difference is undeniable—their eyes are brighter, their posture changes, and their spirit is lighter because Jesus set them free.”
― Kathryn Krick, Unlock Your Deliverance: Keys to Freedom From Demonic Oppression

“Somebody always had to pay, and he was glad it was not going to be him. Meanwhile he had managed to ruin the perfect marriage by turning Dick into a crayfish and making Rachael think that he had run off with another woman.”
― Max Nowaz, Get Rich or Get Lucky

“The only term I can think of is “bloodlust,â€� because that’s what it sounds like when chimps tear a monkey apart. It’s not like any other kill you’d ever see, not like when a leopard brings down a gazelle or even sharks rip into a seal. Those are cold, mechanical. Apes go crazy. Hopping and dancing. Don’t tell me they don’t enjoy it.”
― Max Brooks, Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre

“You’re too goddamned fat,â€� he said. I took a defiant drag on my cigarette and willed myself not to cry. The remark made me dizzy. For the past four years, Ma and Grandma had played by the rule: never to mention my weight. Now my jeans and sweatshirt were folded in a helpless pile beside me and there was only a thin sheet of paper between my rolls of dimply flesh and this detestable old man. My heart raced with fear and nicotine and Pepsi. My whole body shook, dripped sweat. “Any trouble with your period?â€� he asked. “No.â€� “What?â€� “No trouble,â€� I managed, louder. He nodded in the direction of his stand-up scale. The backs of my legs made little sucking sounds as they unglued themselves from the plastic upholstery. He brought the sliding metal bar down tight against my scalp and fiddled with the cylinder in front of my face. “Five-five and a half,â€� he said. “Two hundred . . . fifty-seven.â€� The tears leaking from my eyes made stains on the paper gown. I nodded or shook my head abruptly at each of his questions, coughed on command for his stethoscope, and took his pamphlets on diet, smoking, heart murmur. He signed the form. At the door, his hand on the knob, he turned back and waited until I met his eye. “Let me tell you something,â€� he said. “My wife died four Tuesdays ago. Cancer of the colon. We were married forty-one years. Now you stop feeling sorry for yourself and lose some of that pork of yours. Pretty girl like you—you don’t want to do this to yourself.â€� “Eat shit,â€� I said. He paused for a moment, as if considering my comment. Then he opened the door to the waiting room and announced to my mother and someone else who’d arrived that at the rate I was going, I could expect to die before I was forty years old. “She’s too fat and she smokes,â€� I heard him say just before the hall rang out with the sound of my slamming his office door. I was wheezing wildly by the time I reached the final landing. On the turnpike on the way home, Ma said, “I could stand to cut down, too, you know. It wouldn’t hurt me one bit. We could go on a diet together? Do they still sell that Metrecal stuff?â€� “I’ve been humiliated enough for one fucking decade,â€� I said. “You say one more thing to me and I’ll jump out of this car and smash my head under someone’s wheels.”
― Wally Lamb, She's Come Undone

“He did not know that the Old One was his father, for such a relationship was utterly beyond his understanding, but as he looked at the emaciated body he felt a dim disquiet that was the ancestor of sadness.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey

“He chose a certain path in life, it proved to be a misguided one, but there, he chose it, he can say that at least. As for myself, I cannot even claim that. You see, I trusted. I trusted in his lorship's wisdom. All those years I served him, I trusted I was doing something worthwhile. I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

“When I remember that dizzy summer, that dull, stupid, lovely, dire summer, it seems that in those days I ate my lunches, smelled another's skin, noticed a shade of yellow, even simply sat, with greater lust and hopefulness - and that I lusted with greater faith, hoped with greater abandon. The people I loved were celebrities, surrounded by rumor and fanfare; the places I sat with them, movie lots and monuments. No doubt all of this is not true remembrance but the ruinous work of nostalgia, which obliterates the past, and no doubt, as usual, I have exaggerated everything.”
― Michael Chabon, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh