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41 " An old man, disappointed, of failing strength, may try to reinvigorate himself by means of anger. "
― Saul Bellow , Henderson the Rain King
42 " began to be aware of the tremble of insects as they played their instruments underneath the stems, down at the very base of the heat. "
43 " I felt singularly ashamed of not being a doctor. "
44 " what are the generations for, please explain to me? Only to repeat fear and desire without a change? This cannot be what the thing is for, over and over and over. Any good man will try to break the cycle. "
45 " I might have added, as it entered my mind to do, that some people found satisfaction in being. Being. Others in becoming. Being people have all the breaks. Becoming people are very unlucky, always in a tizzy. The Becoming people are always having to make explanations or offer justifications of the Being people. While the Being people provoke these explanations. "
46 " But on the way to the wedding I saw it was a mistake. I tried to get out of the car at a stoplight in my wedding dress, but he caught me and pulled me back. He punched me in the eye,” she said, “and it was a good thing I had a veil because the eye turned black, and I cried all the way through the ceremony. Also, my mother is dead. "
47 " mangoes in our breasts, which give us away. And it isn’t only that I’m scared of all those wives, but there’ll be nobody to talk to any more. I’ve gotten to that age where I need human voices and intelligence. That’s all that’s left. Kindness and love. "
48 " Oh, my body, my body! Why have we never really got together as friends? I have loaded it with my vices, like a raft, like a barge. "
49 " Oh, death from what we do not want is the most common of all the causes. "
50 " Slavery has never really been abolished. More people are enslaved to different things than you can shake a stick at. "
51 " And I saw Clara Spohr coming from the Oyster Bar or being washed forth into this sea, dismasted, clinging to her soul in the shipwreck of her beauty. "
52 " Nature is a deep imitator. And as man is the prince of organisms he is master of adaptations. He is the artist of suggestions. He himself is his principle work of art, in the body working in the flesh. What miracle! What triumph! Also, what a disaster! What tears are to be shed! "
53 " But oh, unreality! Unreality, unreality! That has been my scheme for a troubled but eternal life. "
54 " The way grew more and more stony and this made me suspicious. If we were approaching a town we ought by now to have found a path. Instead there were these jumbled white stones that looked as if they had been combed out by an ignorant hand from the elements that make least sense. There must be stupid portions of heaven, too, and these had rolled straight down from it. I am no geologist but the word calcareous seemed to fit them. They were composed of lime and my guess was that they must have originated in a body of water. Now they were ultra-dry but filled with little caves from which cooler air was exhaled—ideal places for a siesta in the heat of noon, provided no snakes came. But the sun was in decline, trumpeting downward. The cave mouths were open and there was this coarse and clumsy gnarled white stone. "