Shirts and jeans litter the asphalt, the empty fabric limbs askew as if they're attempting to escape. Blood smears Sarah's lips as she struggles against the chest of a dirty looking man with a beard. Terror. Terror is the only word my mind can seize on and it forgets what it means. I forget how to think - to move.
There isn__ a word for walking out of the grocery storewith a gallon jug of milk in a plastic sackthat should have been bagged in double layers__o that before you are even out the dooryou feel the weight of the jug draggingthe bag down, stretching the thinplastic handles longer and longerand you know it__ only a matter of time untilbottom suddenly splits.There is no single, unimpeachable wordfor that vague sensation of somethingmoving away from youas it exceeds its elastic capacity __hich is too bad, because that is the wordI would like to use to describe standing on the streetchatting with an old friendas the awareness grows in me that he isno longer a friend, but only an acquaintance,a person with whom I never made the effort__ntil this moment, when as we say goodbyeI think we share a feeling of relief, a recognition that we have reachedthe end of a pretense, though to tell the truthwhat I already am thinking aboutis my gratitude for language__ow it will stretch just so much and no farther;how there are some holes it will not cover up;how it will move, if not inside, thenaround the circumference of almost anything__ow, over the years, it has given meback all the hours and days, all theplodding love and faith, all themisunderstandings and secretsI have willingly poured into it.
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There isn__ a word for walking out of the grocery storewith a gallon jug of milk in a plastic sackthat should have been bagged in double layers__o that before you are even out the dooryou feel the weight of the jug draggingthe bag down, stretching the thinplastic handles longer and longerand you know it__ only a matter of time untilbottom suddenly splits.There is no single, unimpeachable wordfor that vague sensation of somethingmoving away from youas it exceeds its elastic capacity __hich is too bad, because that is the wordI would like to use to describe standing on the streetchatting with an old friendas the awareness grows in me that he isno longer a friend, but only an acquaintance,a person with whom I never made the effort__ntil this moment, when as we say goodbyeI think we share a feeling of relief, a recognition that we have reachedthe end of a pretense, though to tell the truthwhat I already am thinking aboutis my gratitude for language__ow it will stretch just so much and no farther;how there are some holes it will not cover up;how it will move, if not inside, thenaround the circumference of almost anything__ow, over the years, it has given meback all the hours and days, all theplodding love and faith, all themisunderstandings and secretsI have willingly poured into it.
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And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me- filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door- Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;- This it is, and nothing more.
Love is an exorcism of angels.
Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest. Above all, Eros (while it lasts) is necessarily between two only. But two, far from being the necessary number for Friendship, is not even the best. And the reason for this is important.... In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets... Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. They can then say, as the blessed souls say in Dante, 'Here comes one who will augment our loves.' For in this love 'to divide is not to take away.
Sing a song of suspense in which the players die.Four and twenty ravens in an Edgar Allan Pie.When the pie was broken, the ravens couldn't sing.Their throats had been sliced open by Stephen, the new King.The King was in his writing house, stifling a laughWhile his queen was in a tizzy of her bloody Lovecraft.When the dead maid got the garden for her rank as royal whore,King's shovel made it double and he married nevermore.
If on thoughts of death we are fed,Thus, a coffin, became my bed.