Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts

““... Some people,” Miss R. said, “run to conceits or wisdom but I hold to the hard, brown, nutlike word. I might point out that there is enough aesthetic excitement here to satisfy anyone but a damned fool.””

“Gallery-going The artist, who has been standing behind a dealer, regards K. with hatred.”

“When my falling event was postponed, were you disappointed? Did you experience a disillusionment-event?”

“that’s chaos can you produce chaos? Alice asked certainly I can produce chaos I said I produced chaos she regarded the chaos chaos is handsome and attractive she said and more durable than regret I said and more nourishing than regret she said”

“chaos is tasty AND USEFUL TOO”

“Kellerman falls to his knees in front of the bench. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I committed endoarchy two times, melanicity four times, encropatomy seven times, and preprocity with igneous intent, pretolemicity, and overt cranialism once each.””

“See the moon? It hates us.”

“I wanted be be one, when I was young, a painter. But I couldn’t stand stretching the canvas. Does things to the fingernails. And that’s the first place people look. Light-minded or no, I’m...riotous with mental health.”

“Gregory, you didn’t listen to my advice. I said try the Vernacular Isles. Where fish are two for a penny and women two for a fish. But you wanted M.I.T. and electron-spin-resonance spectroscopy.”

“Too, maybe I was trying on the role. Not for myself. When a child is born, the locus of one’s hopes...shifts, slightly. Not altogether, not all at once. But you feel it, this displacement. You speak up, strike attitudes, like the mother of a tiny Lollabrigida. Drunk with possibility once more.”