If you don’t know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as well read until they do.
— CLIVE JAMES, “LATEST READINGS”
There’s no use in denying it: this has been a bad week. I’ve started drinking my own urine.
— BRET EASTON ELLIS, “AMERICAN PSYCHO”
Who opens the morning paper without the wild hope of huge headlines announcing some great disaster? Provided of course that it affects other people and not oneself.
— IRIS MURDOCH, “A FAIRLY HONOURABLE DEFEAT”
My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression.
— PHILIP K. DICK, “DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?”
Life’s tallest order is to keep the feelings up, to make two dollars’ worth of euphoria go the distance.
— STANLEY ELKIN, “PIECES OF SOAP”
Plague Season, Through the Eyes of Writers
Dwight Garner
NY TIMES