Just After Sunset Quotes
"You don’t see what’s right in front of your eyes, but sometimes he did."
"Now the world belonged to the Ambers, Ashleys, and Tiffanys."
"A cry of absence, absence in the heart."
"The station was a narrow wooden throat."
"I don’t care if his name is Jack D. Ripper."
"Perception isn’t everything, but perception and expectation together?"
"She collapsed to the floor, shouting with laughter."
"The wind was off the mountains, and cold."
"It wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t, and you know it."
"I think you don’t leave your fiancée stranded in the middle of nowhere."
"Little Willa Stuart cares for nobody but herself, and everyone sees it but you."
"Night came on and the stars unrolled across the sky."
"The moon was full now, shining like a silver dollar."
"We went off the tracks and into the gorge!"
"Run your ass off, get those endorphins going."
"Vermillion Key lay dazed and all but deserted."
"They feel us, like cold air pushing them away."
"She had to demolish the prison that held her. It was the only way, and she had only minutes to do it."
"Please," she said, turning sideways to the refrigerator, giving it her profile.
"It’s rotten!" she cried to the empty kitchen. "The damn thing’s rotten!"
"Don’t step on the cubes," she advised herself in a ragged voice.
"Stop looking for him," she told herself in the gray, shadowy kitchen. "Just do your work."
"I’m home, honey!" Pickering called cheerfully. "Miss me?"
"You cut me," he said. "You bitch, you dumb bitch, look at this, you cut me. Why did you cut me?"
"No," she said, snarling it this time. "No, you won’t."
"Nicole," she said. "Her name was Nicole."
"I’m going now," she said. "Do you hear me?"
"No, you were already mad. As in hatter."
"How are they this morning?" he asks, meaning her sinuses, meaning her allergies.
"I had a bad dream. I actually screamed myself awake."
"Fuckin’ hoor." That was Lee’s scripture tonight, right out of Second Drunkalonians.
"He certainly wasn’t going to go into the men’s room and take the long, leisurely piss he had planned and looked forward to."
"Welcome to the fucking Lifetime Channel."
"It was the subjective nature of time and the eerie speed of thought when the mind was suddenly put under pressure."
"Lee lay where he was with his hands out in front of him, almost touching."
"Your big old teddy bear wants you to go."
"If you live long enough—when one of ’em can’t come in, because he’ll be lying home dead of a stroke or a heart attack."
"He wasn’t the kind of artist who had (or needed to have) favorites."
"That kind of workout was only about the next thing."
"But more often than not a kind of survival overdrive kicks in at such moments."
"I can remember how my mother touched my flushed cheek when I got downstairs, and the thoughtful concern in her eyes."
"What followed the first emotional wave that August day in my apartment was much simpler: I thought I was going out of my mind."
"I did the only thing I could think of, which was to grab up Sonja D’Amico’s shades and trot back down to the elevator with them."
"Things like that have a way of sticking, whether you want them to or not."
"If you only wanted to get rid of the bags under my eyes, I’d either see a plastic surgeon or go to my family doctor."
"That brings me to the enclosure, which I hope you will look at when you finish this letter."
"I ask him to give me some instances of his current mental wrongness, and he shrugs."
I can’t fix it," he whispers. "But I can keep things from getting worse.
"I think photography’s a much artier art than most people believe."
"An artist, even an amateur one, puts his soul into the things he creates."
"Places where the cloth gets ragged and reality is thin."
"I could see a lot more sky at the crest of the hill."
"We cover the faces of the corpses as a kind of gate."
"It's how we see the world that keeps the darkness beyond the world at bay."
"The force on the bright side of things."
"The irony is I haven’t taken many pictures since the ones I took in Ackerman’s Field."
"I felt that if I left, something terrible would happen."
"Outside, in the distance, the predatory squawk of an owl dropping onto some small, scurrying animal."
"Inside, close, the steady purr of the cat."
"It seemed to be grinning, like Alice’s Cheshire had in Wonderland."
"Spinal shock, he thought. Paralyzed. Maybe temporary. More likely permanent."
"The cat purred in his ear like thunder."
"Wasn’t supposed to do that, was I?" Halston croaked.
"Looking at that strange, schizophrenic face, Halston could understand how Drogan might have thought it was a hellcat."
"Feeling. Coming back. Pins and needles."
"The cat leaped at his face, claws out, spitting."
"His ears felt as if they had been doused with lighter fluid and then set on fire."
"If I can get to my piece, kitty, the rest of your nine lives are going in a lump sum."
"Hellcat my ass. It’s gone to sleep back there."
"He’s on his way to Placer’s Glen to get the inspection sticker renewed on his farm truck when he saw the late morning sun twinkle on something in the ravine beside the road."
"He was on his way to Placer’s Glen to get the inspection sticker renewed on his farm truck when he saw the late morning sun twinkle on something in the ravine beside the road."
"She’s fresh out of the shower when the phone begins to ring."
"He says Annie like no one else, always did."
"Jimmy, are you all right? Are you . . . are you burned?"
"I’m all right," he says. "Most of us are."
"Not the pilot," he says. "He’s not so good."
"I think I died just a second or two before it rang the first time."
"Beep," she whispers, then covers her mouth to hold in laughter that is some emotion even more complicated than grief finding the only way out it has.
"The cat forced its body out and stretched in obscene languor."
"It seemed to be in a hurry, he later told a reporter from the local paper."
"The light over the door of the middle one was on."
"Colored light came in through the windows and made squares on the central aisle."
"Father, I may have committed a terrible sin."
"I don’t know. You’ll have to tell me."
"Son? The day is rolling by, and I have company coming for lunch."
"I don’t think I would ever tell this story."
"I’m sick, I have to go," the child said. Then she kissed him again and stepped back.
"You be all right," Ayana said, and touched my mouth with her tiny palm.
"Ayana, come," the woman said. "We ought to leave these folks."
"You folks have a blessed day, now," she said, and looked at me. "I’m sorry for you," she said, "but this child’s dreams are over."
""He seems better." She paused. "I’ve never seen anything like it in my life."
""She pulled his IV line halfway out . . . he’s bleeding . . . and you just sat there."
"I’ll put it back," I said, and someone else seemed to be speaking.
"What do you mean, wait? They’re trespassers!"
"You can’t just walk into a place, you know," Ralph added.
"Unless you want us to call the police, you have to go."
"I think you should come right away," she said. "Not just Ralph for the night shift. All of you."
"We’re not going, no matter how sick he is," Ruth said.
"He was getting better when we left this afternoon," Trudy said.
"No beer for you, I think," Nurse Chloe said.