Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

two people can sleep in the same bed and still be alone when they close their eyes

Everyone may be ordinary, but they're not normal.

Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it's time to drink.

Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.

Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in fight, searching the skies for dreams.

Deep rivers run quiet.

I never trust people with no appetite. It's like they're always holding something back on you.

Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.

Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe, it is far more inconstant.

Losing you is most difficult for me, but the nature of my love for you is what matters. If it distorts into half-truth, then perhaps it is better not to love you. I must keep my mind but loose you.

Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can.

You got to know your limits. Once is enough, but you got to learn. A little caution never hurt anyone. A good woodsman has only one scar on him. No more, no less.

Genius or fool, you don't live in the world alone. You can hide underground or you can build a wall around yourself, but somebody's going to come along and screw up the works.

Fairness is a concept that holds only in limited situations. Yet we want the concept to extend to everything, in and out of phase. From snails to hardware stores to married life. Maybe no one finds it, or even misses it, but fairness is like love. What is given has nothing to do with what we seek.

Everything, everything seemed once-upon-a-time.

I wasn't particularly afraid of death itself. As Shakespeare said, die this year and you don't have to die the next.

Life's no piece of cake, mind you, but the recipe's my own to fool with.

You're wrong. The mind is not like raindrops. It does not fall from the skies, it does not lose itself among other things. If you believe in me at all, then believe this: I promise you I will find it. Everything depends on this." "I believe you," she whispers after a moment. "Please find my mind.

Most human activities are predicated on the assumption that life goes on. If you take that premise away, what is there left?

Once, when I was younger, I thought I could be someone else. I'd move to Casablanca, open a bar, and I'd meet Ingrid Bergman. Or more realistically - whether actually more realistic or not - I'd tune in on a better life, something more suited to my true self. Toward that end, I had to undergo training. I read The Greening of America, and I saw Easy Rider three times. But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return.

I've always liked libraries. They're quiet and full of books and full of knowledge.

Once again, life had a lesson to teach me: It takes years to build up, it takes moments to destroy.

It's like a kid standing at the window watching the rain.

What was lost was lost. There was no retrieving it, however you schemed, no returning to how things were, no going back.

Huge organizations and me don't get along. They're too inflexible, waste too much time, and have too many stupid people.

But didn't you say you were satisfied with your life?""Word games," I dismissed. "Every army needs a flag.

That's wrong," she declared. "Everyone must have one thing that they can excel at. It's just a matter of drawing it out, isn't it? But school doesn't know how to draw it out. It crushes the gift. It's no wonder most people never get to be what they want to be. They just get ground down.

But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't going anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return. Was that so depressing?Who knows? Maybe that was 'despair.' What Turgenev called 'disillusionment.' Or Dostoyevsky, 'hell.' Or Somerset Maugham, 'reality.' Whatever the label, I figured it was me.

The best musicians transpose consciousness into sound; painters do the same for color and shape.

I am here, alone, at the end of the world. I reach out and touch nothing.”.