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Novelties and Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction QUOTES

Novelties and Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction QUOTES

1 " THE UNIVERSE PROCEEDS out of what it has been and into what it will be, inexorably, unstoppably, at the rate of one second per second, one year per year, forever. At right angles to its forward progress lie the past and the future. The future, that is to say, does not lie “ahead” of the present in the stream of time, but at a right angle to it: the future of any present moment can be projected as far as you like outward from it, infinitely in fact, but when the universe has proceeded further, and a new present moment has succeeded this one, the future of this one retreats with it into the what-has-been, forever outdated. It is similar but more complicated with the past. "

― John Crowley , Novelties and Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction

2 " I’m sorry, really, to be taking it all from you. Don’t be silly. His eyes, large, liquid, remote, were—were whatever is the opposite of silly. She felt no anger at him, and not envy; she did want him to have her house; only—for a wild moment—wanted desperately not to lose it either. She wanted to share it, share it all; she wanted…He went on looking at her, fixedly and unashamedly as a cat; and there came a flaw in time, a doubling of this moment, a shadow scene behind this scene, in which he asked her to come now, come to stay, stay now, stay always, yield it all to him and yet have it all…. As instantly as she perceived it, the flaw healed, and No, no, she said, blinking, turning back to the kitchen door, shaken, as though, unaware, she had found herself walking out on ice. "

― John Crowley , Novelties and Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction

3 " Not until the lamp is utterly shattered,” she said, “and all pages everywhere sealed up in mildew—but then one would only cease to be, wouldn’t one? Till then, simply changelessness. How deliciously restful. It’s what one wanted, isn’t it, what one had prepared for and sought after—what one had invented out of all the terrible longings and dissatisfactions, never knowing that this exactly was what one was inventing—and yet having no other reason, all along, but this. How pleasant and odd that it should be so…. "

― John Crowley , Novelties and Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction