SA4QE - The Slickman A4 Quotation Event
Time after time had violent men sharpened the cross into a sword and made their silken vestments into banners; time after time had they spat out the wafer and the wine and shouted for real blood and real bodies.
Under the bed Death sat humming to itself while it cleaned its fingernails. I never do get them really clean, it said. It's a filthy job I've got but what's the use of complaining. All the same I think I'd rather have been Youth or Spring or any number of things rather than what I am. Not Youth, maybe. That's a little wet and you'd hardly get to know people before they've moved on. Spring's pretty much the same and it's a lady's job besides. Action would be nice to be, I should think.
Elsewhere Action lay in his cell smoking and looking up at the ceiling. What a career, he said. I've spent more time in the nick than anywhere else. Why couldn't I have been Death or something like that. Steady work, security.
From Kleinzeit (Novel, 1974) | Read more
If reality had a stage door I’d hang around there and see what came out after the show.
The black man turned and looked at me. "Tortuguero," he said. He said it like a password but made no secret sign. He said it because he needed to say the name aloud just there and then to me. I nodded, felt dizzy.... How did he know that I knew where Tortuguero was? I shall never see the picture.
Where are we? I said.
In the black.
This isn't black, it's red.
Sometimes the black is red.
"All roads, whether long or short, are hard," said Frog. "Come, you have begun your journey, and all else necessarily follows from that act. Be of good cheer. The sun is bright. The sky is blue. The world lies before you."
'Modern life,' said Jachin-Boaz [to the owner of the bookshop], 'particularly modern life in cities, creates great tensions in people, don't you think?'
'Modern life, ancient life,' said the owner. 'Where there's life there's tension.'
'Yes,' said Jachin-Boaz. 'Tension and nerves. It's astonishing, really, what nerves can do."
'Well, they have a system, you see,' said the owner. 'When you suffer an attack of nerves you're being attacked by the nervous system. What chance has a man got against a system?'
'Exactly,' said Jachin-Boaz. 'He could have delusions, hallucinations.'
'Happens every day of the week,' said the owner. 'Sometimes I, for example, have the delusion that this shop is a business. Then I come back to reality and realize that it's just an expensive hobby.'
"Trubba not"
