[b]Edward St. Aubyn
Words are our slaves: they may be used to fetch a pair of slippers, or to build the great pyramid of Giza: they depend on syntax to make the order of the world manifest, to raise stones into arches and arches into aqueducts.[/b]
Words? They’re a good start. Or, sure, a bad start.
Presumably those who enjoyed inflicting cruelty could hardly believe their luck and set about popularizing the superstition that their victims could only achieve peace of mind by forgiving them.
Another example that, truly, there was not much that could not be rationalized.
The leafless trees, with their black branches stretched hysterically in every direction, looked to him like illustrations of a central nervous system racked by disease: studies of human suffering anatomized against the winter sky.
May yours be reflected in the mighty oak.
If they made a film of my inner life, it would be more than the public could take. Mothers would scream, "Bring back The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so we can have some decent family entertainment!”
Let’s just say that mine is in the general vicinity.
If we can’t control our conscious responses, what chance do we have against the influences we haven’t recognized?
Uh, next to none?
Patrick’s own nanny was dead. A friend of his mother’s said she had gone to heaven, but Patrick had been there and knew perfectly well that they had put her in a wooden box and dropped her in a hole. Heaven was the other direction and so the woman was lying, unless it was like sending a parcel.
In space though there really is no up and down. So, no, she wasn’t lying. At least not necessarily.