"And later, hiding in the latrine from the black boys, I'd take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was. There'd be my face in the mirror, dark and hard with big, high cheekbones like the cheek underneath them had been hacked with a hatchet, eyes all black and hard and mean-looking, just like papa's eyes or the eyes of all those tough, mean-looking Indians you see on TV, and I'd think, That ain't me, that ain't my face. It wasn't even really me then; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted. It don't seem like I ever have been me. How can McMurphy be what he is?"

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey

"It's like each face was a sign like one of those 'I'm Blind' signs the dago accordion players in Portland hung around their necks, only these signs say 'I'm tired' or 'I'm scared' or 'I'm dying of a bum liver' or 'I'm all bound up with machinery and people pushing me alla time.' I can read all the signs, it don't make any difference how little the print gets. Some of the faces are looking around at one another and could read the other fellow's if they would, but what's the sense? The faces blow past in the fog like confetti."

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey

"'Dennis, I can't help it,' he whispered. 'Sometimes I feel like I'm not even here anymore. Help me, Dennis. Help me.' 

'Is LeBay there?' I asked him. 

'He's always here,' Arnie groaned, 'Oh God, always! Except--' 

'The car?' 

'When Christine... when she goes, then he's with her. That's the only time he's... he's...' 

Arnie fell silent. His head slipped over to one side. His chin rolled on his chest in a boneless pivot. His hair dangled toward the snow. Spit ran out of his mouth and splattered on his boots. And then he began to scream thinly and beat his gloved fists on the van behind him: 

'Go away! Go away! Go awaaaaay!' 

Then nothing for maybe five seconds--nothing except the shuddering of his body, as if a basket of snakes had been dumped inside his clothes; nothing except that slow, horrible roll of his chin on his chest. 

I thought maybe he was winning, that he was beating the dirty old sonofabitch. But when he looked up, Arnie was gone. LeBay was there. 

'It's all going to happen just like he said,' LeBay told me. 'Let it go, boy. Maybe I won't drive over you.'"

Christine, Stephen King

"... who was dead and yet undead, and I thought of his lust (but was it lust? or just a need to spoil things?)"

Christine, Stephen King

Cronos (1993)

"Some voice inside, sly and insinuating--asking a question he was afraid to answer."

Delirious (1991) 

"Did he really want to know? He didn't. In fact, there were times when he didn't want the car at all. There were times when he felt he would be better off just... well, junking it. Not that he ever would, or could. It was just that, sometimes (in the sweaty, shaking aftermath of that dream last night, for instance), he felt that if he got rid of it, he would be... happier. 

The radio suddenly spat an almost feline burst of static. 

'Don't worry,' Arnie whispered. He ran his hand slowly over the dashboard, loving the feel of it. Yes, the car frightened him sometimes. And he supposed his father was right; it had changed his life to some degree. But he could no more junk it than he could commit suicide."

Christine, Stephen King

The Boy Who Could Fly (1986)

"Engines. That's something else about being a teenager. There are all these engines, and somehow you end up with the ignition keys to some of them and you start them up but you don't know what the fuck they are or what they're supposed to do. There are clues, but that's all. The drug thing is like that, and the booze thing, and the sex thing, and sometimes other stuff too--a summer job that generates a new interest, a trip, a course in school. Engines. They give you the keys and some clues and they say, Start it up, see what it will do, and sometimes what it does is pull you along into a life that's really fulfilling, and sometimes what it does is pull you right down the highway to hell and leave you all mangled and bleeding by the roadside."

Christine, Stephen King

"I sat there behind the wheel of my car, not sure what I should do, wishing I was someplace else, anyplace else, trying on shoes at Thom McAn's, filling out a credit application in a discount store, standing in front of a pay toilet stall with diarrhea and no dime. Anyplace, man. It didn't have to be Monte Carlo. Mostly I sat there wishing I was older. Wishing we were both older. 

But that was a copout job. I knew what to do. Reluctantly, not wanting to, I slid across the seat and put my arms around him and held him. I could feel his face, hot and fevered, mashed against my chest. We sat that way for maybe five minutes, and then I drove him to his house and dropped him off. After that I went home myself. Neither of us talked about it later, me holding him like that. No one came along the sidewalk and saw us parked at the curb. I suppose if someone had, we would have looked like a couple of queers. I sat there and held him and loved him the best I could and wondered how come it had to be that I was Arnie Cunningham's only friend, because right then, believe me, I didn't want to be his friend. "

Christine, Stephen King

"Family features stay on / in the blind tumble of flesh. / Just enough to suggest / the grab-bag a body is."

"Portrait of a Family," The Minus Sign, Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Henry Fool (1997)

Draughtsman's Contract (1982) 

"Back then I thought they could do anything. I didn't belong, but I felt lucky just to be near."

The Pickle Index, Eli Horowitz

"Ray, you wanna learn how to dance? (yeah) 'cause you gotta touch someone when you dance."

"Citizens, the time for pussyfooting is over. The time for dillying, for dallying. No more can we use rhetoric as a replacement for deeds. No more can I hide behind words, yearning instead of learning, using sentiment to substitute for--see, I'm doing it again. No, this is a new era, a new me. ... I have wasted too much time already. Love is sweet and life is short."

The Pickle Index, Eli Horowitz

"Portion of Wall Misplaced, Whereabouts Unknown"

"Dieter was hunched forward, balanced on the balls of his feet, his chin jutting out from his chest. He had his hands up, palms out, fingers splayed. He patted the air in front of the hole, swiping at it, running his hands back and forth and up and down along an invisible plane, mere inches from the guards' faces. They stared, transfixed. No one spoke. Dieter continued to slide his hands through the air, reaching forward again and again, each time stopping in the space where the wall once stood. 

The two guards stood frozen in contemplation. The bushier one opened his mouth and then closed it. The other opened his own mouth and left it that way. 

'Upon further examination,' said the first, 'I might want to revise my initial opinion.' 

'I was just thinking the same thing,' said the other. 'I can't say it looks exactly the same as other walls I've seen. But there's clearly a wall there--I feel sure of that.' 

His partner squinted. 'I feel the same way. I wasn't sure how to say it, but you--you've described it perfectly' 

'Not all walls are the same.' 

'Certainly not.'"

The Pickle Index, Eli Horowitz

The Trouble With Angels (1966)

"... the curve of a tree trunk, a muscle or a column, will display the essence of its form--for the tree, sap, for the muscle, blood, and for the column, an inner cohesive core providing structural integrity. Therefore, a convex wall will be characterized not only by an outward expansion but also by an inward-looking characterization."

"The Convex Wall," Archetypes in Architecture, Thomas Thiis-Evensen

Francesco (1984)

"Gravity will always draw objects and ourselves down, representing in the extreme an annihilation of existence. That something stands up against this force by rising up is therefore synonymous with survival--and survival implies freedom from the earth."

"Gravity and Motion from Above Downward," Archetypes in Architecture, Thomas Thiis-Evensen

Psycho III (1986)

best-quality deputy

John Lurie & the Lounge Lizards, "Show 122," Sunday Night (1989 TV)

"Anyway, ringmastering was for ringmasters, and I still had the bat cages to clean. 'You are so good with the shovel,' Zloty would say, tousling my hair. 'You are a true master. I would not deprive you of an opportunity to display your talents.' Sometimes I thought about the farm, the dirt-prod, the three unfinished mounds, but never for very long--there were so many bat cages.

That was six years ago. I think. ... I'm no longer a little girl, and I'm no longer such a sucker for enchantment. I used to dream of someday standing in the center of the ring myself, mesmerizing a hushed throng of ladies and gentlemen, spinning acts into feats. Now I mostly dream of a waterproof blanket, and mostly I keep my mouth shut."

The Pickle Index, Eli Horowitz

"The show was just beginning when I arrived. Zloty stood in the center of the ring, his arms outstretched, tracing circles in the air to indicate the boundlessness of the wonders we were soon to witness. He used words like intrepid and spellbound and liability waiver. He said we were privileged to witness such feats. Had I ever really witnessed anything before? I searched my memories, but mostly it was just a whole bunch of ordinary seeing. On the farm, there was only the work and how the work got done. You looked at the dirt mounds, you looked at your hands, splinter-rich from the dirt-prod, and then you went to bed. But to witness something--to become an accomplice just by watching--that was something else. 

...By the grand finale the bleachers were almost empty. But I hardly noticed--I was entranced. I stayed until the end, when had the troupe came out to take a bow to scattered, anemic applause. And I stayed to watch Rueben push a wide broom across the dirt floor and into a pile in the corner. And while they dismantled the ring and packed up the lights, I curled into a wooden crate filled with novelty wigs and buried myself deep inside. If I wasn't chosen, I would choose. I'm a performer now, I thought, and I felt the netting of a wig settle into place just above my ears. I thought about my dirt-pod still lying next to those three mounds, and then I fell asleep."  

The Pickle Index, Eli Horowitz

Trust (1990)

"... I understood that we would forever be trailing five years behind the dream of prosperity. I saw that I was not the chosen one. There was no chosen one. My purpose in the world, which once seemed so clear and crisp, had fallen away, and in its place was just the glacial creep of the hard days ahead."

The Pickle Index, Eli Horowitz

"Despite the festive atmosphere, the air was rank with an unmistakable Kornblattery. The man was apprehended, yes, but his ideas remain, airborne pustules of mental infection, wafting along a gentle breeze of passivity. A figure like Zloty Kornblatt does not simply materialize out of the fermented mists, and his network of dedicated followers does not simply wither away in his absence. At this moment, highly trained disruptor cells lurk just a river's width from Destina, in Burford, our nation's spiritual pantry, a city of earthly fold living happy, brine-spattered lives. These humble people aren't distracted by Destina's insatiable appetite for novelty, the endless chase of new flavors, delicious foods, fresh vegetables. They don't have to worry about being first to discover the new treat of tomorrow; there, tomorrow is the same as today and yesterday, only slightly more vinegary. Yes, theirs is an innocent, authentic existences, uncluttered by the pleasant odors and dull administrative powers of our capital city."

The Pickle Index, Eli Horowitz

(subterranean)

The Paper Chase (1973)

"I'd started wetting the bed again, yeah. After two years dry."

Escape from L.A. (1996)

"Till the Morning Comes," The Ones That Got Away, Stephen Graham Jones

your collecting has been restricted

White Lightnin' (2009)

"Don't come near me, Jennifer, I wouldn't know what to say to you now. My memories of you have coexisted for too long with too many dialogues between us that never occurred and I don't want to add more exchanges to this jumble. Don't have the wherewithal to parse imaginaries."

The Revolutionaries Try Again, Mauro Javier Cardenas

"(... simply what? what have you done with the memory of what was given to you? -- forget her?)"

It's Pat (1994)

"(how many times does the Virgin Mary need to appear to remind us of what we already know? how many times do we need to induce ourselves into believing she has come to warn us again that we're on the wrong path? in how many places around the world does she need to appear for no one to disbelieve anymore? or are her recurrent appearances what perpetuate disbelief?)"

The Revolutionaries Try Again, Mauro Javier Cardenas 

"-- Why are you telling me all of this Rolando? -- oh -- so you were not asleep -- he doesn't say -- what is he supposed to say? -- I'm sharing all these tender memories with you so you'll know -- what? -- that I am not what I am? --"

The Revolutionaries Try Again, Mauro Javier Cardenas

"... builds a / valentine out of a blue / leaf & tree pitch for his missing sister"

Figures for a Darkroom Voice, Noah Eli Gordon & Joshua Marie Wilkinson

Wise Blood (1979) 

"Distance is not something to believe in, & yet, you are so far from the image of yourself."

Figures for a Darkroom Voice, Noah Eli Gordon & Joshua Marie Wilkinson

(I was first shown how things grow here.)

"--and she seems to be talking to the plants or petting the plants as if trying to console them -- That's my grandmother she's apologizing to the tomatoes and the potatoes because we'll have to eat them soon."

The Revolutionaries Try Again, Mauro Javier Cardenas

Oh Lord, let this be my motto:

"I in You, and Ye in me."