No One Ever Confides A

I Think When You Are Truly Stuck, When You Have Stood Still In The Same Spot For Too Long, You Throw A Grenade In Exactly The Spot You Were Standing In, And Jump, And Pray. It Is The Momentum Of Last Resort.

Lyda Was An Exuberant, Even A Dramatic Gardener.... She Was Always Holding Up A Lettuce Or A Bunch Of Radishes With An Air Of Resolute Courage, As Though She Had Shot Them Herself.

And Then There Were The Wallflowers Who Had Recognized For Years That The Thing Was Hopeless, Who Had Found In That Information A Kind Of Calm. They No Longer Tried, With A Bright And Desperate Effort, To Sustain A Conversation With Somebody's Brother, Somebody's Usher, Somebody's Roommate, Somebody's Roommate's Usher's Brother... The Category Of Wallflower Who Had Given Up On All This Was Very Quiet, Not Indifferent, Only Quiet. And She Always Brought A Book.

My Dislike Has No Consequences. It Accrues Only In My Mind—like Preserves On A Shelf Or Guns Zeroing In, And Never Firing.

Moral Self-infatuation Has Its Own Corruptions, After All. With Time, Almost Every Other Principle Of The Magazine Acquired An Ironic Echo, A Sort Of Cackling Aftermath.