[b]Shirley Jackson
You never know what you are going to want until you see it clearly.[/b]
For example, if you ever do.
When Jim Donell thought of something to say he said it as often and in as many ways as possible, perhaps because he had very few ideas and had to wring each one dry.
I know what you’re thinking: dasein.
Sure, maybe.
I looked at the clock with the faint unconscious hope common to all mothers that time will somehow have passed magically away and the next time you look it will be bedtime.
Trust me: Fathers too.
Everything is worse…if you think something is looking at you.
That or better.
Now we are going to have a new noise, Eleanor thought, listening to the inside of her head; it is changing. The pounding had stopped, as though it had proved ineffectual, and there was now a swift movement up and down the hall, as of an animal pacing back and forth with unbelievable impatience, watching first one door and then another, alert for a movement inside, and there was again the little babbling murmur which Eleanor remembered; Am I doing it? She wondered quickly, is that me? And heard the tiny laughter beyond the door, mocking her.
Clearly, the part “inside our head” can be a motherfucker.
Everything that makes the world like it is now will be gone. We’ll have new rules and new ways of living. Maybe there’ll be a law not to live in houses, so then no one can hide from anyone else, you see.
Or, to put it another way, the more things change the more they’ll stay exactly the same. Unless of course [this time] that’s wrong.