Could I Be Chandler Quotes

She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.

Tall, aren't you?" she said. "I didn't mean to be." Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.

I wouldn't have been sent back to help you," Tristan continued. "I wouldn't have been made an angel if it weren't important that you live, Ivy. I want you to be mine" -Ivy could hear the pain in his voice- "but you're not." "I am!" she cried out loud. "We're on different sides of a river," he said, "and it's a river that neither of us can cross. You were meant for somebody else.

I stopped walking and wrapped my arms tightly around him. "You know I can hear your heart." "Could you hear it breaking when I accused you of getting my cartoon pulled?" he asked. I held my head back so I could look him directly in the eye. "I didn't pull it." "You couldn't have," he replied, "because I did.

She was thinking. i could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother for her.

I leaned back against him and rested my cheek on his shoulder. I could feel the river water dripping off of him. "Thank you" I whispered. When I looked up, I saw he was crying.

I decided I could lose nothing by the soft approach. If that didn't produce for me—and I didn't think it would—nature could take its course and we could bust up the furniture.

Mr Cobb was my escort. Such a nice escort, Mr Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should see him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten - when Larry Cobb was sober.

In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor -- by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things. He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks -- that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. The story is the man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.

My life had turned into a Raymond Chandler detective story and there seemed to be nothing I could do to stop its precipitous slide.

Maybe I was tired and irritable. Maybe I felt a little guilty. I could learn to hate this guy without even knowing him. I could just look at him across the width of a cafeteria and want to kick his teeth in.

I'm a licensed private investigator and have been for quite a while. I'm a lone wolf, unmarried, getting middle-aged, and not rich. I've been in jail more than once and I don't do divorce business. I like liquor and women and chess and a few other things. The cops don't like me too well, but I know a couple I get along with. I'm a native son, born in Santa Rosa, both parents dead, no brothers or sisters, and when I get knocked off in a dark alley sometime, if it happens, as it could to anyone in my business, nobody will feel that the bottom has dropped out of his or her life.

I’m a copper,” he said. “Just a plain ordinary copper. Reasonably honest. As honest as you could expect a man to be in a world where it’s out of style.

Leaning her silly, beautiful, drunken head on my shoulder, she said, "Oh, Esther, I don't want to be a feminist. I don't enjoy it. It's no fun." "I know," I said. "I don't either." People think you decide to be a "radical," for God's sake, like deciding to be a librarian or a ship's chandler. You "make up your mind," you "commit yourself" (sounds like a mental hospital, doesn't it?). I said Don't worry, we could be buried together and have engraved on our tombstone the awful truth, which some day somebody will understand: WE WUZ PUSHED.

I don't like your manner," Kingsley said in a voice you could have crack a Brazil nut on. "That's all right," I said. "I'm not selling it.

The other part of me wanted to get out and stay out, but this was the part I never listened to. Because if I ever had I would have stayed in the town where I was born and worked in the hardware store and married the boss's daughter and had five kids and read them the funny paper on Sunday morning and smacked their heads when they got out of line and squabbled with the wife about how much spending money they were to get and what programs they could have on the radio or TV set. I might even get rich - small-town rich, an eight-room house, two cars in the garage, chicken every Sunday and the Reader's Digest on the living room table, the wife with a cast-iron permanent and me with a brain like a sack of Portland cement. You take it, friend. I'll take the big sordid dirty crooked city.

I got down off the stool and stood waiting. She might or might not blow me down. I didn't particularly care. Once in a while in this much too sex-conscious country a man and a woman can meet and talk without dragging bedrooms into it. This could be it, or she could just think I was on the make. If so, the hell with her.

Such a nice escort, Mr. Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should see him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten—when Larry Cobb was sober.

What made me love Christ wasn’t that all of a sudden I figured out how to do life. What made me love Christ is that when I was at my worst, when I was at my lowest point, when I absolutely could not clean myself up and there was nothing anybody could do with me, right at that moment, Christ said, “I’ll take that one. That’s the one I want.

Considering the current turn of events-i.e. my fingers fondling her pussy-I’m optimistic that a blowjob could be brought to the table for negotiation.

Experience had taught me not to get close to guys who fell in love with Liza. I had been burned twice and I knew I couldn't compete. It didn't matter that I could no longer give a guy access to my sister; if Mike knew who I was, I'd be access to romantic memories of her. He'd start looking for traits and signs of her in me. And I wasn't setting myself up for that kind of heartache.

The incredible blue of his eyes and the intensity with which zeroed in on me made my heart jolt, made me feel as if I were on an elevator that had suddenly dropped beneath me. All I could do was stare at him, surprised. Of course the character of Helena would have acted the same way. I wasn't acting but I looked like I was

Hope you didn't bring any spiders into the van with you,' Simon put in. 'Hey, I'm thinking we could take you back outside and hose you down, just to make sure. You'd definitely smell better if we did, which, I mean, bonus.' Jeremy scraped both hands through his hair again, then beat them clean against his thighs. 'Believe me, Simon, if we had access to a garden hose, I'd be the first to turn it on myself. I feel foul.' 'Hate to break it to you, Archer, but that feeling is not lying to you,' Simon said with mild relish.

Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.

You know who they are?” Tony said softly. “I could maybe give nine guesses. And twelve of them would be right.” (I'll be waiting)

nobody told me the second I gave my life to him, he would start tilling up the very deep places of my heart, revealing the darkest, nastiest things. Nor was I told about the stuff that would come to the surface so that I could deal with it and find my way to joy, through the cross. No one really preached that message.

Mr. Cobb was my escort,” she said. “Such a nice escort, Mr. Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should see him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten—when Larry Cobb was sober.

She was quite a doll. She wore a white belted raincoat, no hat, a well-cherished head of platinum hair, booties to match the raincoat, a folding plastic umbrella, a pair of blue-gray eyes that looked at me as if I had said a dirty word. I helped her off with her raincoat. She smelled very nice. She had a pair of legs - so far as I could determine - that were not painful to look at. She wore night sheer stockings. I stared at them rather intently, especially when she crossed her legs and held out a cigarette to be lighted

She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.

Uh-huh. Could be,' I said. It was a spot for a paragraph of lucid prose. Henry Clarendon IV would have obliged. I didn't have a damn thing more to say.

I went down to the lobby and slipped the catch and then took a shower and put my pajamas on and lay down on the bed. I could have slept for a week. I dragged myself up off the bed again and set the catch on the door, which I had forgotten to do, and walked through a deep hard snowdrift out to the kitchenette and laid out glasses and a bottle of liqueur Scotch I had been saving for a really high-class seduction.

We live in what is called a democracy, rule by the majority of the people. A fine ideal if it could be made to work. The people elect, but the party machines nominate, and the party machines to be effective must spend a great deal of money. Somebody has to give it to them, and that somebody, whether it be an individual, a financial group, a trade union or what have you, expects some consideration in return. What I and people of my kind expect is to be allowed to live our lives in decent privacy. I own newspapers, but I don’t like them. I regard them as a constant menace to whatever privacy we have left. Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honorable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo, and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on its circulation and you know what the circulation depends on.

The creators took each of us out for lunch, too, to get to know us, so they could incorporate some aspects of our real personalities into the show. At my lunch I said two things: one, that even though I considered myself not unattractive, I had terrible luck with women and that my relationships tended toward the disastrous; and two, that I was not comfortable in any silence at all—I have to break any such moment with a joke. And this became a built-in excuse for Chandler Bing to be funny—perfect for a sitcom—and Chandler wasn’t much good with women, either (as he shouts at Janice as she leaves his apartment, “I’ve scared ya; I’ve said too much; I’m awkward and hopeless and desperate for love!”). But think of a better character for a sitcom: someone who is uncomfortable in silence and has to break the silence with a joke.

Lacey said softly, "Tristan, you need to rest now. There's nothing you can do until you rest." But he could not leave Ivy. He put his arms around her. She slipped through him and moved toward the bureau, taking the picture in her hands. He wrapped her in his arms again, but she only cried harder. Then Ella was set lightly on the bureau top. Lacey's hands had done it. The cat rubbed up against Ivy's head. "Oh, Ella, I don't know how to let go of him." "Don't let go," Tristan begged. "In the end, she must," Lacey warned. "I've lost him, Ella, I know it. Tristan is dead. He can't hold me ever again. He can't think of me. He can't want me now. Love ends with death." "It doesn't!" Tristan said. "I'll hold you again, I swear it, and you'll see that my love will never end." "You're exhausted, Tristan," Lacey told him. "I'll hold you, I'll love you forever!" "If you don't rest now," Lacey said, "you'll become even more confused. It'll be hard to tell real from unreal, or to rouse yourself out of the darkness. Tristan, listen to me..." But before she finished speaking, the darkness overtook him.

Simon snitched one of the cardboard coffee cups from Sandra's tray. "I love you guys," he said affably. "Have I told you that lately? Every time I start worrying that maybe this job has driven me insane, all I have to do is look at you all and I realize how much worse off I could be.

You probably didn’t intend it, but you’ve done me a favor. With an assist from Detective Dayton. You’ve solved a problem for me. No man likes to betray a friend but I wouldn’t betray an enemy into your hands. You’re not only a gorilla, you’re an incompetent. You don’t know how to operate a simple investigation. I was balanced on a knife-edge and you could have swung me either way. But you had to abuse me, throw coffee in my face, and use your fists on me when I was in a spot where all I could do was take it. From now on I wouldn’t tell you the time by the clock on your own wall. ” For some strange reason he sat there perfectly still and let me say it. Then he grinned. “You’re just a little old cop-hater, friend. That’s all you are, shamus, just a little old cop-hater.” “There are places where cops are not hated, Captain. But in those places you wouldn’t be a cop.

Still, there’s just . . . too much color in her face, too much light in her eyes . . . and I can feel the warm body heat radiating off her. I imagine her colder, paler. She could be almost perfect, if she wasn’t oozing all that spritely vitality. There is no greater tragedy than beauty needlessly wasted.

Indeed a peculiar rule of Hebrew law provided that if the verdict was instantaneous and unanimous it was invalid and could not stand. If the prisoner had not a single friend in court, the element of mercy was wanting in the verdict, said the ancient Hebrews, and the proceedings were regarded in the light of conspiracy and mob violence. A

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.

He began as a minor imitator of Fitzgerald, wrote a novel in the late twenties which won a prize, became dissatisfied with his work, stopped writing for a period of years. When he came back it was to BLACK MASK and the other detective magazines with a curious and terrible fiction which had never been seen before in the genre markets; Hart Crane and certainly Hemingway were writing of people on the edge of their emotions and their possibility but the genre mystery markets were filled with characters whose pain was circumstantial, whose resolution was through action; Woolrich's gallery was of those so damaged that their lives could only be seen as vast anticlimax to central and terrible events which had occurred long before the incidents of the story. Hammett and his great disciple, Chandler, had verged toward this more than a little, there is no minimizing the depth of their contribution to the mystery and to literature but Hammett and Chandler were still working within the devices of their category: detectives confronted problems and solved (or more commonly failed to solve) them, evil was generalized but had at least specific manifestations: Woolrich went far out on the edge. His characters killed, were killed, witnessed murder, attempted to solve it but the events were peripheral to the central circumstances. What I am trying to say, perhaps, is that Hammett and Chandler wrote of death but the novels and short stories of Woolrich *were* death. In all of its delicacy and grace, its fragile beauty as well as its finality. Most of his plots made no objective sense. Woolrich was writing at the cutting edge of his time. Twenty years later his vision would attract a Truffaut whose own influences had been the philosophy of Sartre, the French nouvelle vague, the central conception that nothing really mattered. At all. But the suffering. Ah, that mattered; that mattered quite a bit.

I suppose it could be said that indeed all my roads to Arthur have led to my novel, The Green Knight’s Apprentice. I read Malory when I was very young and my first reading left me with very v ivid images that haunt me still: white stags, headless damsels, horns hanging from tree limbs, and giants. Oh yes, I had the usual sword in the stone, lady of the lake, and Holy Grail images, too, I assure you.

But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things. He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks—that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.

Will:"You know, when two people narrowly escape falling to their deaths, they usually have something to talk about, Even if they hadn't met before that moment, they usually have something to sayto each other afterward. But you haven't said anything to me. I've been tryingto give you some time. I've been trying to give you some space. All I want is-" Ivy:"Thank you. Thank you for risking your life. Thank you for saving me." "That's not what I wanted! Gratitude is the last thing I-" "Well, let me tell you what I want, Honesty." "When haven't I been honest? When?" "I found your note, Will. I know you blackmailed Gregory. I didn't tell the police yet, but I will." "So tell them, go ahead! It's old news to them, but if you've got the note, it's one more piece for the police files. I just don't get- Wait a minute. Do you think- You couldn't really think I did that to make money, could you?" "That's usually why people blackmail." "You think I'd betray you like that? Ivy I set up that blackmail--I got the Celentanos to help me out, and i videotaped it-so that i had something to take to the police." "Back in August when you were in the hospital, Gregory called me and told me you had tried to commit suicide. I couldn't believe it. I knew how much you missed Tristan, but I knew you were a fighter, too. I went to the train station that morning to look around and try to figure out what had gone through your head. As i was leaving I found the jacket and hat. I picked them up, but for weeks I didn't know how or even if they were connected to what had happened." "When school started I ran across some file photos of Tristan in the newspaper office. Suddenly I figured it out. I knew it wasn't like you to jump in front of a train, but it was just like you Eric and Gregory to con you across the track. I remembered how Eric had played chicken with us, and I blamed him at first. Later I realized that there was a lot more than a game going on." "Why didn't you tell me this before? You should have told me this before." "You weren't telling me things, either." "I was trying to protect you!" "What the heck do you think I was doing?...I had to distract him, give him another target, and try to get something on him at the same time. It almost worked. I gave the tape to Lieutenant Donnelly Tuesday afternoon, but Gregory had already laid his trap." "You thought I'd betray you." "Will I'm sorry. I was wrong. I really am sorry, I made a mistake. A big one. Try to understand. I was so mixed up and afraid. I thought I betrayed myself when I trusted you-and betrayed Tristan when I fell in love with you. Will!" "You fell in love with me?" "Love you, Will." "Love you, Ivy.

Mr. Cobb was my escort," she said. "Such a nice escort, Mr. Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten — when Larry Cobb was sober.

Jessie said, “Fine. But we need some lunch. Let’s get some food from the store here and then go.” Grandfather agreed and let Jessie plan to get what was needed. “We can eat in the woods before we go up the trail,” she said. The Aldens were soon on their way, Henry driving in the lead. When they had driven as far as they could into the woods, Henry and Mr. Carter parked the cars. Lunch was quickly eaten because everyone was so curious about the Indian in the woods. Benny called back, “When we get there, do you think it is all right to knock on the door?” “I should think so,” said Henry. “What else can we do? We want to go in and meet him, don’t we? The ranger said he was perfectly harmless.

Playwright Noel Coward once said, “Work is more fun than fun.” I included that quote in a seminar guidebook for a sales group a year ago and one of the participants in the back of the room raised his hand and said, “Yeah, Steve, who is this Noel Coward guy? I figure with a quote like that he’s either a porn star or a professional golfer.” That line got a great laugh at my expense, but it also revealed a truth (which almost all humor does). People believe that the fun jobs are always somewhere else. “If only I could get a job like that!” “If only I had been a pro golfer!” But the truth is that fulfilling and fun work can be found in anything. The more we consciously introduce game-playing elements (personal bests listed, goals, time limits, competition with self or others, record-keeping, and so on), the more fun the activity becomes.

Hemingway took his hands off the wheel and spat out of the window. “We’re on a nice street here, ain’t we? Nice homes, nice gardens, nice climate. You hear a lot about crooked cops, or do you?” “Once in a while,” I said. “Okey, how many cops do you find living on a street even as good as this, with nice lawns and flowers? I’d know four or five, all vice squad boys. They get all the gravy. Cops like me live in itty-bitty frame houses on the wrong side of town. Want to see where I live?” “What would it prove?” “Listen, pally,” the big man said seriously. “You got me on a string, but it could break. Cops don’t go crooked for money. Not always, not even often. They get caught in the system. They get you where they have you do what is told them or else. And the guy that sits back there in the nice big corner office, with the nice suit and the nice liquor breath he thinks chewing on them seeds makes smell like violets, only it don’t—he ain’t giving the orders either. You get me?” “What kind of a man is the Mayor?” “What kind of guy is a mayor anywhere? A politician. You think he gives the orders? Nuts. You know what’s the matter with this country, baby?” “Too much frozen capital, I heard.” “A guy can’t stay honest if he wants to,” Hemingway said. “That’s what’s the matter with this country. He gets chiseled out of his pants if he does. You gotta play the game dirty or you don’t eat. A lot of bastards think all we need is ninety thousand FBI men in clean collars and brief cases. Nuts. The percentage would get them just the way it does the rest of us. You know what I think? I think we gotta make this little world all over again. Now take Moral Rearmament. There you’ve got something. M.R.A. There you’ve got something, baby.” “If Bay City is a sample of how it works, I’ll take aspirin,“ I said. “You could get too smart,” Hemingway said softly. “You might not think it, but it could be. You could get so smart you couldn’t think about anything but bein’ smart. Me, I’m just a dumb cop. I take orders. I got a wife and two kids and I do what the big shots say. Blane could tell you things. Me, I’m ignorant.

Uh-huh. I’m a very smart guy. I haven’t a feeling or a scruple in the world. All I have the itch for is money. I am so money greedy that for twenty-five bucks a day and expenses, mostly gasoline and whiskey, I do my thinking myself, what there is of it; I risk my whole future, the hatred of the cops and of Eddie Mars and his pals, I dodge bullets and eat saps, and say thank you very much, if you have any more trouble, I hope you’ll think of me, I’ll just leave one of my cards in case anything comes up. I do all this for twenty-five bucks a day—and maybe just a little to protect what little pride a broken and sick old man has left in his blood, in the thought that his blood is not poison, and that although his two little girls are a trifle wild, as many nice girls are these days, they are not perverts or killers. And that makes me a son of a bitch. All right. I don’t care anything about that. I’ve been called that by people of all sizes and shapes, including your little sister. She called me worse than that for not getting into bed with her. I got five hundred dollars from your father, which I didn’t ask for, but he can afford to give it to me. I can get another thousand for finding Mr. Rusty Regan, if I could find him. Now you offer me fifteen grand. That makes me a big shot. With fifteen grand I could own a home and a new car and four suits of clothes. I might even take a vacation without worrying about losing a case. That’s fine. What are you offering it to me for? Can I go on being a son of a bitch, or do I have to become a gentleman, like that lush that passed out in his car the other night?

Seems old?” said Violet. “Do I know her?” “Yes, you all know her very well,” said Mr. Alden. “She is Mrs. McGregor.” “Mrs. McGregor!” shouted all the children. They could not believe it.

I set out the chess board. I filled a pipe, paraded the chessmen, and inspected them for French shaves and loose buttons, and played a championship tournament game between Gortcha-koff and Meninkin, seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armour, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.

You kids haven’t been touching these, have you?” asked Dr. Snood. “No, we--” Henry began. “Make sure you don’t,” said Dr. Snood in a stern voice. “And make sure the lid on that coffin stays closed.” “Of course--” said Jesse. Before she could say any more, he walked out. The Aldens stood still for a moment, stunned by Dr. Snood’s harsh behavior. At last Jessie said, “I don’t know which was stranger: the way he was looking at those artifacts or the way he just spoke to us.” The Mystery of the Mummy's Curse

Have you lived here a very long time?” the young woman asked the man, who was wearing a fishing vest today. “I’m trying to get information about those statues out at Skeleton Point. Nobody seems to know how old they are or where they came from.” “Or where some parts of the statues are going,” the man told the young woman. “Lots of fool stories are going around about somebody--or something--damaging the statues. Stay away from them, I say. Those old statues have been out there forever--before I was born, anyway. Leave ‘em be. Why do you want to know?” The young woman hesitated, then stopped to read the label on a jar of honey. “Um…just curious.” With that, the young woman left the store without buying anything. “Newcomers!” the man told Benny and Violet when he saw them standing there. “Always asking questions. You’d think from that young lady that Shady Lake was nothing but old statues covered with moss. What about our fishing? Why, our trout are practically jumping out of the lake.” “They are?” Benny asked, hoping to find out where he could see some of these jumping trout. The man left without answering Benny. The Mystery at Skeleton Point

When the children returned to the studio, the STUDIO CLOSED sign was still on the door. This didn’t stop the Aldens. “Hi, Hilda! It’s the Aldens,” Jessie yelled as she rapped on the window. Hilda whirled around, startled to see four pairs of eyes staring at her. She opened the door slightly. “What are you doing here? My studio is closed right now.” Violet looked past Hilda. “Oh, so you have the Clover Dodge statue,” she said before the young woman could block her view. “Are you fixing it? I’d love to see how.” Hilda stared at Violet. “I’m not here to teach art classes, Violet. I’m here to…well, I haven’t time to explain.” Henry, who was taller than Hilda, peered right over her shoulder. “Are you fixing the arm from the angel statue, too? Charlotte will be glad you got started on that.” Hilda studied the Aldens’ faces. “What do you mean? William was the one who got me working on the angel statue, not Charlotte. He told me she left most of the decisions up to him.” Hilda pushed the door to keep the children back. “I really must get back to my work. I’ll see you at Skeleton Point later this afternoon.” The Aldens had a lot more to say, but they never got the chance. After she slammed the door, Hilda walked over to the windows and pulled the shade down one by one. The Mystery at Skeleton Point

There was a full-sized seated skeleton in front of them on the steps. “The Walking Skeleton!” Benny said. Henry chuckled. “No, I guess you’d have to call it the Sitting Skeleton. It’s just sitting there as if it stopped to take a rest.” “I’m not afraid of Halloween tricks even when it’s not Halloween.” Benny scurried past the skeleton. Henry looked very serious. “Now I know someone is trying to scare us away from Skeleton Point again,” he said. “You’re probably right, Henry,” said Jessie. “But who could it be?” “William Mason and Hilda Stone,” said Benny, almost immediately. “They’re mean to us, and they don’t want us around.” “You’re right, Benny. Remember that man in town said William Mason wanted to buy Skeleton Point for himself? Maybe he’s mad at Charlotte for buying it first.” Jessie looked thoughtful. “What about Greeny?” she asked. “We know he doesn’t want us around, either--and we know he’s taking things from the house. Maybe he wants to scare us away so we won’t figure out what he’s up to. We should still keep an eye on him.” Henry agreed. “In fact, we should keep an eye on all of them.” When they returned to the house, the Aldens found that William had joined Hilda outside. Jessie waved. “Hi!” she called out, as if she had come straight from her errand across the lake. “Sorry we took so long. The hardware store was out of those light switches.” Hilda and William kept working. It seemed neither of them wanted to say anything. Finally Hilda spoke up. “Oh, it turns out we don’t need them after all.” William pushed back the brim of his red hat and checked his watch. “Half the day’s gone. I don’t see much use for you kids sticking around here. Hilda and I are doing some technical work Charlotte asked us to do--not something suitable for children.” “We know how to measure, too” Benny said. “I learned in kindergarten.” Hilda hesitated. “What we’re doing is a little more complicated than what you do in school. Now, why don’t you children go for a bike ride. Or a swim,” she suggested before going into the house. Henry turned to William. “We already went for a swim,” he said. “An unplanned one.” William didn’t say anything about untying the Alden’s boat, but he looked away and cleared his throat. “Well, then, go for a planned one this afternoon. Take tomorrow off, too. Everything’s under control here.” Before William turned to go into the house, the Aldens looked down. Just as they suspected, William was wearing heavy work boots that left deep prints just like the ones near the statue. The Mystery at Skeleton Point

It was just like Big Clay’s so I could return his.” Clay spoke up and he sounded grumpy. “Can you just call me Clay?” he said. “I’m so tired of being ‘Big Clay.’” Little Clay paused. “Okay. But you’ll have to call me Melody.” “Melody?

in this society there is no one else you can count on,” said Chandler, the historian. “They don’t think a society really exists.” That tendency proved useful for most of Cambodia’s history, as the nation lived through successive wars with its neighbors. Most Cambodians focused only on family and village life. These were their only havens as foreign troops ranged over the nation and government leaders schemed and connived for their own accounts. Egoism was of undeniable value during the Khmer Rouge era. To survive Cambodians had to behave as Kok Chuum, the Dang Run village chief, did. “I ate wild potatoes I found in the woods,” he said. “I did it secretly. I told no one.” Presumably, back then, others near him were starving to death, as workers did all over the nation. But in the twenty-first century individualism, this shared personality trait, ensured that Cambodians would remain hungry and illiterate. By and large they could not, would not, stand up and advocate for themselves.   Imagine

Well, I put Danny on the case.” Jake smiled at the mention of Chandler’s youngest and most brilliant analyst.  Danny Wartowski had joined the group two years ago at the ripe old age of twelve. He was an immeasurable genius: his IQ was so high no standardized test could accurately capture it.

Now, one last idea,” said Mr. Alden. He looked at Jessie, with a twinkle in his eye. “I heard all about your Mystery Man,” he said. “He’s not my Mystery Man,” said Jessie, laughing. “But he was nice, wasn’t he?” “He doesn’t seem like a Mystery Man any more,” said Violet. “I’d like to see him again sometime.” Mr. Alden said, “He could come to the party tomorrow, if anyone asked him.” “Very well,” said Aunt Jane. “I don’t mind having a Mystery Man at my birthday party.” “Will he fly?” asked Jessie. “No. He is already here,” said Grandfather. “He got off the train when I did!” “And we didn’t even see him,” said Benny. “Well, he is still a Mystery Man in some ways, isn’t he?” said Violet.

But legend has it that when Sir John, or JohnJohn as he was known to friends, signed the country into existence, he eloquently defined what it meant to be a Canadian. Unfortunately, the next day, crippled from the sauce, nobody could remember what it was he said. "I remember it was jolly good," said Sir Edward Barron Chandler. "Mais oui," said Sir Jean-Charles Chapais. "Magnifique!" They then had a round of straighteners and started all over again. The answer to what it means to be Canadian was lost to the ages. For his part Macdonald had no recollection of signing anything important, let alone saying anything profound. In fact, he only learned he'd helped form a country when he read about it in a day-old newspaper on the train home. That's a hell of a thing to find out you've done while you're nursing a hangover. Also, he was missing a shoe. Personally, I blame this prime ministerial blackout for the fact that, 150 years later in 2004, nobody had answered the question yet.

One winter day Jessie Alden met her brother Henry in the hall. She said, “Henry, I think Grandfather is up to something. Violet thinks so, too.” “What do you mean, Jessie?” said Henry. “Do you mean business trouble?” “Oh, no! Not at all!” said Jessie. “I think he is planning something. He jokes with Benny all the time. And he smiles to himself when he thinks no one is looking.” Henry said, “I hope he is happy. What else have you noticed?” “Last night Grandfather was at the telephone in the hall. When I came down the stairs, he stopped talking suddenly. “Then the other day a strange man came to see him. He was a very big, strong man. I could hear his deep voice. He laughed all the time. Jolly, you know. Grandfather laughed a lot, too,” said Jessie. “Maybe you are right,” said Henry. “I’ll keep my eyes open, too. He will tell us if there is anything he wants us to know.” Henry did watch his grandfather after that. It was true. Mr. Alden seemed very happy. Once he started to say something. Then he stopped. Then at last, one day in January, the same man came to call. Mr. Alden took him into the front room and shut the door. He took the stranger’s hat and coat and hung them up. He gave him an easy chair. The four Aldens would have been surprised to hear what their grandfather then had to say to the stranger. He said, “My grandchildren love to see new places.

She smiled a free, beautiful and perfectly natural smile. “And you cannot do a damn thing about all this, darling, unless you destroy Mavis Weld utterly and finally.” “Last night she proved she was willing to destroy herself.” “If she was not acting.” She looked at me sharply and laughed. “That hurt, did it not? You are in love with her.” I said slowly, “That would be kind of silly. I could sit in the dark with her and hold hands, but for how long? In a little while she will drift off into a haze of glamour and expensive clothes and froth and unreality and muted sex. She won’t be a real person any more. Just a voice from a sound track, a face on a screen. I’d want more than that.

The other part of me wanted to get out and stay out, but this was the part I never listened to. Because if I ever had I would have stayed in the town where I was born and worked in the hardware store and married the boss's daughter and had five kids and read them the funny paper on Sunday morning and smacked there heads when the get out of line and squabbled with the wife about how much spending money they were to get and what programs the could have on the radio or TV set. I might even have got rich -small town rich- an eight-room house, two cars in the garage, chicken every Sunday and the Reader's Digest on the living room table, the wife with cast iron permanent and me with a brain like a sack of Portland cement. You take it, friend. I'll take the big sordid dirty crooked city.

But with you, there is nothing that scares me.  No matter what happens, no matter what madness the world may throw at me, you’re always there.  I can look into the future and see you, always you, constant and unchanging.  Hell or high water, widespread fires, plagues of the worst kind…none of it would matter, because you’re always there.  I could break and fall victim to the most mind-shattering horrors of life, but you would be there, and everything always comes back to that.  You keep me real, you keep me alive.  You rearrange me till I’m sane.

I put the doped whiskey down where he could reach it, if his hands hadn't been strapped.

For a brief moment, she looks at the fetus with a soft expression that I think is motherly love, or something, probably imagining all it could have been, and then she lifts it to her mouth and begins to eat.

This . . . this isn’t what it looks like,” Helen says, her eyes flicking from me to the dead baby. “I don’t know what else it could be,

Queer how that was always cropping up. Here she was highly respectable, married, mother of a small boy, and, in spite of all that, knowing all that, these people took one look at her and immediately got that now-I-wonder look. Apparently it was an automatic reaction of white people—if a girl was colored and fairly young, why, it stood to reason she had to be a prostitute. If not that—at least sleeping with her would be just a simple matter, for all one had to do was make the request. In fact, white men wouldn't even have to do the asking because the girl would ask them on sight. She grew angrier as she thought about it. Of course, none of them could know about your grandmother who had brought you up, she said to herself. And ever since you were big enough to remember the things that people said to you, had said over and over, just like a clock ticking, 'Lutie, baby, don't you never let no white man put his hands on you. They ain't never willin' to let a black woman alone. Seems like they all got a itch and a urge to sleep with 'em. Don't you never let any of 'em touch you.' Something that was said so often and with such gravity it had become a part of you, just like breathing, and you would have preferred crawling in bed with a rattlesnake to getting in bed with a white man. Mrs. Chandler's friends and her mother couldn't possibly know that, couldn't possibly imagine that you might have a distrust and a dislike of white men far deeper than the distrust these white women had of you. Or know that, after hearing their estimation of you, nothing in the world could ever force you to be even friendly with a white man. And again she thought of the barrier between her and these people. The funny part of it was she was willing to trust them and their motives without questioning, but the instant they saw the color of her skin they knew what she must be like; they were so confident about what she must be like they didn't need to know her personally in order to verify their estimate.

The next time you’re worried about something, ask yourself, 'What small thing can I do right now?' Then do it. Remember not to ask, 'What could I possibly do to make this whole thing go away?' That question does not get you into action at all.

He looked at the corner of the ceiling with an absent stare. I looked at him with a not so absent stare. He looked like a man who could be trusted with a secret—if it was his own secret.

Then I sat there holding the neck of the cool bottle and wondering how it would feel to be a homicide dick and find bodies lying around and not mind at all, not have to sneak out wiping doorknobs, not have to ponder how much I could tell without hurting a client and how little I could tell without too badly hurting myself. I decided I wouldn’t like it.

Helen gets up and sits on my face, so I start tonguing her and she cries out as a rush of fluid floods my mouth. Not exactly my thing, but I do have a dead baby on my dick, so one could argue tonight is all about exploring new areas.

What made me love Christ wasn't that ll of a sudden I figured out how to do life. What made me love Christ is that when I was at my worst, when I was at my lowest point, when I absolutely could not clean myself up and there was nothing anybody could do with me, right at that moment, Christ said "I'll take that one. That's the one I want.

when I get knocked off in a dark alley sometime, if it happens, as it could to anyone in my business, and to plenty of people in any business or no business at all these days, nobody will feel that the bottom has dropped out of his or her life.

Why would it seem dangerous to you?” “What if the Moon came along with you?” April asked. Jeff looked horrified, but said nothing. “I mean, sure you should be able to get it back the same way if you could jockey it around enough, but back exactly where it was supposed to go?” April asked. “You’d never get it just right and all the years and years of predictions of the astronomers and data for navigation… even the tides would be screwed up and one has to assume people would notice no matter how fast you got it back. Sure as anything, somebody would figure out who was to blame too.

It’s a great place, baby. A great neighbourhood. It’s got a huge garden,” he says, nodding to the right. “There’s a two-bed guesthouse in the garden, which is where Stuart will live.” “Stuart’s not going to live with us anymore?” I pout. “Well, we talked, baby, and we decided it was time he move out and get his own place. He’s all grown up, ready to face the world. We have to let him go sometime. We can’t keep him forever.” Jake gives me a grave look, clearly taking the piss. “You’re an idiot.” “Takes one to know one.” “That it does.” I smile warmly. He rubs his nose against mine, Eskimo-style. “I just thought it would be good to have our privacy, and Stuart gets his too. Also, I no longer have to run the risk of catching him making out with a dude.” “You love it really.” “What? Catching Stuart making out with a guy?” Pressing my lips together, suppressing a smile, I nod. “Sweetheart, nothing could kill my hard-on quicker, believe me. I like the person I’m with to be soft and warm.” He runs his fingertips down my bare arm. “I want her made to fit around me.” “Like me?” I scratch my fingernails over the denim covering his pert behind. “Exactly like you.” Jake bends his head down to mine and kisses me softly. “Will you miss him?” “Are we still talking about Stuart?” “I’m just worried he’ll think my being here is pushing him out.” “Sweetheart, he works for me, and it’s not like he’s going far.” “I know he works for you, but he’s your friend too. You guys have lived together for such a long time. You’re like Joey and Chandler. Except you’d probably have been Joey, and Chandler was never gay. Oh God, would that make me Monica or Rachel?” “What the fuck are you talking about?” He laughs. “Friends.” “I’m gonna have to watch this show, aren’t I, just so I can figure out what the fuck you’re talking about half the time.” “Yes, Pervy Perverson, you are. Honestly, I have no clue how you haven’t. I’ll buy the first season on Blu-ray and we can watch it together.” “Can’t wait.” “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, Wethers

I could see Chandler Street back in Philadelphia, where I lived immediately after my divorce. “Your own road has led through some interesting places. That it (Philadelphia) saw the flowing of democracy and freedom (I could see the Declaration of Independence); it was where it started in your land, and it spread throughout the globe. Now it is darkened, it is endangered.” Speak. You Are Permitted. The permission to question. The openness. An unprecedented opportunity to plumb the depths of some of life’s most persistent and challenging questions. A frank conversation… with God… about free will, the need for Christianity, idolatry, Jewish suffering, the Holocaust, the devil, the messiah and the age of the world. It would prove an unforgettable night. October 16, 1987 … Later that night, Rosalyn felt once more that she had to write. Soon she began to speak. "Do you believe what has been written? Do you believe this is that which is penned by you is that which is truth?.... There shall be resistance. There shall be family versus family. There will be much dissension.

Henry can go to bed while his clothes dry,” said Benny. “Say, listen, Benny!” cried Henry. “How would you like to go to bed? You get busy and think of something I could put on.” “Jessie could make you a suit out of a blanket,” said Benny suddenly. “I really could!” cried Jessie. “It’s lucky we brought along Violet’s workbag. I’ll make you a pair of pants out of a blanket. And you can put on your new sweater while your things dry.” “Good for you, Jessie,” said Henry. “Now let’s be sure we have thought of everything we want, so I won’t have to go out again.” “I have an idea,” said Benny. “Why don’t you put on your swimming suit to go outside and then your clothes won’t get wet?