People From Virginia

"As he watched this beautiful, still world, Louie played with a thought that had come to him before. He had thought it as he had watched hunting seabirds, marveling at their ability to adjust their dives to compensate for the refraction of light in water. He had thought it as he had considered the pleasing geometry of the sharks, their gradation of color, their slide through the sea. He even recalled the thought coming to him in his youth, when he had lain on the roof of the cabin at the Cahuilla Indian Reservation, looking up from Zane Grey to watch night settling over the earth. Such beauty, he thought, was too perfect to have come about by mere chance. That day in the center of the Pacific was, to him, a gift crafted deliberately, compassionately, for him and Phil."

"In the 1930s, America was infatuated with the pseudoscience of eugenics and its promise of strengthening the human race by culling the "unfit" from the genetic pool. Along with the "feebleminded," insane, and criminal, those so classified included women who had sex out of wedlock (considered a mental illness), orphans, the disabled, the poor, the homeless, epileptics, masturbators, the blind and the deaf, alcoholics, and girls whose genitals exceeded certain measurements. Some eugenicists advocated euthanasia, and in mental hospitals, this was quietly carried out on scores of people through "lethal neglect" or outright murder. At one Illinois mental hospital, new patients were dosed with milk from cows infected with tuberculosis, in the belief that the undesirable would perish. As many as four in ten of those patients died. A more popular tool of eugenics was forced sterilization, employed on a raft of lost souls who, through misbehavior of misfortune, fell into the hands of state governments. By 1930, when Louie was entering his teens, California was enraptured with eugenics, and would ultimately sterilize some twenty thousand people."

"In Europe, Hitler was laying plans to conquer the continent. In Asia, Japan's leaders had designs of equal magnitude... Central to the Japanese identity was the belief that it was Japan's divinely mandated right to rule its fellow Asians, whom it saw as inherently inferior. "There are superior and inferior races in the world," said the Japanese politician Nakajima Chikuhei in 1940, "and it is the sacred duty of the leading race to lead and enlighten the inferior ones." The Japanese, he continued, are "the sole superior race of the world." Moved by necessity and destiny, Japan's leaders planned to "plant the blood of the Yamato [Japanese] race" on their neighboring nations' soil. They were going to subjugate all of the Far East."

"The men were surrounded by water but they couldn't drink it. The salt content in seawater is so high that it is considered a poison. When a person drinks seawater, the kidneys must generate urine to flush the salt away, but to do so, they need more water than is contained in the seawater itself, so the body pulls water from its cells. Bereft of water, the cells begin to fail. Paradoxically, a drink of seawater causes potentially fatal dehydration"

"Fast, Cheap, Good - Pick Any Two."

"The outcry surrounding the public disclosure of the project had taken only three months to die, this—thought Jocundra—a telling commentary upon the spongelike capacity of the American consciousness to absorb miracles, digest them along with the ordinary whey provided by the media, and reduce them to half-remembered trivia."

"“It’s not hope,” said Jocundra. “It’s just confusion. I know he’s dead.” “Sure it’s hope,” said Mr. Brisbeau. “Me, I ain’t no genius, but I can tell you ‘bout hope. When my boy he’s missin’ in action, I live wit hope for ten damn years. It’s the cruelest thing in the world. If it get a hook in you, maybe it never let you go no matter how hopeless things really is.” He closed up the sack and laughed. “I remember what my grand-mère used to say ’round breakfas’ time. My brother John he’s always after her to fix pancakes. Firs’ ting ever’ mornin’ he say, ‘Well, I hope we’re goin’ to have pancakes.’ And my grand-mère she tell him jus’ be glad his belly’s full, him, and then she say, ‘You keep your hope for tomorrow, boy, ’cause we got grits for today.’” He stood and shouldered the sack. “Maybe that’s all there is to some kinds of hopin’. It makes them grits go down easier.”"

"Things Specialist Charles N. Wilson Wants You To Know · · · · · 1: Everything I've ever known has been no more than a powerful conviction. 2: Nothing motivates like sex and death and sound effects. 3: Politics is the Enemy. 4: Jesus and Mohammed would probably hang out together."

"The half moon sailed high, sharp-winged shadows skimming across it, and the conical hills and the vine-shrouded trees washed silver-green under the moonlight had the look of a decaying city millennia after a great catastrophe."

"It was easy to see how one could think of the family as a single terrible creature stretching back through time, some genetic flaw or chemical magic binding the spirit to the blood."

"The necessary had been accomplished. That’s the way Les Invisibles work. Singular, unquantifiable events. Impossible to treat statistically, to define with theory."

"“And then along came Satan’s Eye Itself. Television.” He laughed, as at some fatal irony. “Don’t you hear the evil hum of the word, the knell of Satan? Television! It’s the ruling character of your lives, like the moon must have been for Indians. An oracle, a companion, a signal of the changing seasons. But rather than divine illumination, each night it spews forth Satan’s imagery. Murders, car crashes, mad policemen, perverted strangers! And you lie there decomposing in its flickering, blue-gray light, absorbing His horrid fantasies!”"

"Overwhelmed with disgust, Donnell said, “I could sell you sorry fuckers anything, couldn’t I?” They weren’t sure they had heard correctly; they looked at each other, puzzled, asking what had been said. “I could sell you sorry fuckers anything,” he repeated, “as long as it had a bright package and was wrapped around a chewy nugget of fear. I could be your green-eyed king. But it would bore me to be the salvation of cattle like you. Take my advice, though. Don’t buy the crap that’s slung into your faces by two-bit wart-healers!” He jabbed his cane at Papa Salvatino, who stood open-mouthed in the aisle, a litter of paper cups and fans and Bibles spreading out from his feet. “Find your own answers, your own salvation. If you can’t do that,” said Donnell, “then to Hell with you.”"

"“An attic’s the afterlife of a house,” said Otille, opening the door. “Or so my mother used to say.”"

"We uncovered new forces, we took a step along what may be an endless path toward divinity, we redirected the entire thrust of psychoanalytic theory, and, as with all knowledge, we found that deeper and more compelling mysteries yet lay beyond those we had reduced to the security of fact."

"Every object, the old man had said, is but an interpretation of every other object. There is no sure knowledge, only endless process."

"Doesn’t that sound like God to you? This big stupid, invulnerable thing that resembles us and whose creations are more intelligent than it is? The Bible left out that part, but it would explain a great deal."

"I submit that all psychotherapy is manipulation; that as psychiatrists we do not heal people, but manipulate their neuroses into functional modes."

"That the official and the criminal are inextricably aligned should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the workings of their government, but nowhere is this juxtaposition so literal and apparent as in Mexico City."

"All journeys end in disappointment if for no other reason than that they end."

"Evil required no real genius, only power, lack of conscience, and an inquisitive nature such as I had seen at work in the tea forest. Men were, indeed, made in Its Image…at least writers and criminals were."

"Manipulate? Yes, I manipulated. And despite the ensuing events, I would do so again, for it is the function of psychiatry to encourage the living to live."

"She’s sad because she’s drinking to be sad because she’s afraid that what she does not feel is actually a feeling. Typical post-modern Manhattan bullshit."

"Travel has always served to inspire me, as it has many writers, as it apparently did my alter ego; yet the farther we proceeded down the Mekong, the more I came to realize that there was a blighted sameness to the world and its various cultures. Strip away their trappings and you found that every tribe was moved by the same passions, and this was true not only in the present but also, I suspected, in ages past. Erase from your mind the images of the kings and exotic courtesans and maniacal monks that people the legends of Southeast Asia, and look to a patch of ground away from the temples and palaces of Angkor Wat—there you will find the average planetary citizen, a child eating the Khmer equivalent of a Happy Meal and longing for the invention of television."

"Doubt concerning their mental well-being creeps in. Is this an instance of healing or a freak scene? Are they two very different people who have connected on a level new to both of them, or are they emotional burnouts who aren’t even talking about the same subject and have misapprehended mild sexual attraction for a moment of truth? Just how much difference is there between those conditions?"

"“You had no right,” I said. “You—” Tuu’s face hardened. “We had no right to mislead you? Please, Mr. Puleo. Between our peoples, deception is a tradition.”"

"Here was a beast for whom there could be no predator. What better definition of God is there than that?"

"And that in itself was a sufficient reason to hit him, purely for educational purposes: I had, you see, reached the level of drunkenness at which an amoral man such as myself understands his whimsies to be moral imperatives."

"Depravity always incorporates obsession."

"I glanced at him. He was wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses, and that consolidated my anger. Why is it, I ask you, that every measly little wimp in the universe thinks he can put on a pair of mirrored sunglasses and instantly acquire magical hipness and cool, rather than—as is the case—looking like an asshole with reflecting eyes?"

"In mine, while there was also agony, it was essentially a love affair with revolution, with the idea of revolution. And as with all great passions, what was most alluring was not the object of passion but the new depth of my own feelings. Thus I was blind to the realities underlying it."

"“You must think us fools,” he said, leading me back into the gathering, “to waste ourselves in commemorating an era which never really existed.”"

"She went on to dismiss much of postmodernism as having “an overengineered archness” and, except for a few exemplary authors, being a refuge for those writers whose “disregard for traditional narrative (was) an attempt to disguise either their laziness or their inability to master it.”"

"The Southern education stuffs you full of incontrovertible proof that the Rebel defeat was a wild and improbable stroke of misfortune, that the unbeatable military genius of the Confederacy was foiled by an alliance of fate and Yankee treachery. If Stonewall hadn’t misplaced his boots, if Jeb hadn’t gone dancing the night before, if the creek didn’t rise. If, if, if. Acceptance of this viewpoint often leads to embarrassment in later life."

"“These movies, they make war seem like a mystical opportunity. Well, man, when I was here it wasn’t quite that way, y’know. It was leeches, fungus, the shits. It was searchin’ in the weeds for your buddy’s arm. It was lookin’ into the snaky eyes of some whore you were bangin’ and feelin’ weird shit crawl along your spine and expectin’ her head to do a Linda Blair three-sixty spin.” I slipped into a chair and leaned closer to Witcover. “It was Mordor, man. Stephen King land. Horror. And now, now I look around at all these movies and monuments and crap, and it makes me wanna fuckin’ puke to see what a noble hell it’s turnin’ out to be!”"

"I yearned for that future. I wanted to live in the illusion that persuades us that true-life experience can be obtained on the Internet."

"The arms dealers were of especial interest to me. They commonly operated on street corners (some nights, in certain quarters, there seemed to be one on almost every corner) and offered a wide selection of handguns and ammo, the odd assault weapon—hardly surprising in a country where you could, I've been told, blow away a cow with a rocket launcher for a fee of two hundred dollars, less if you were prepared to haggle. I saw in them the future of my own country, where death was celebrated with equal enthusiasm, although candy-coated by Technicolor and video games and television news. When the coating finally wore off, as it threatened to do, there we would all be, in Cambodia."

"[T]o Major-General George H. Thomas and the officers and soldiers under his command for their skill and dauntless courage, by which the rebel army under General Hood was signally defeated and driven from the state of Tennessee."

"During the whole war his services were transcendent, winning the first substantial victory at Mill Springs in Kentucky, January 20th, 1862, participating in all the campaigns of the West in 1862-3-4, and finally, December 16th, 1864 annihilating the army of Hood, which in mid winter had advanced to Nashville to besiege him."

"[T]he greatest efforts made by the defeated insurgents since the close of the war have been to promulgate the idea that the cause of liberty, justice, humanity, equality, and all the calendar of the virtues of freedom, suffered violence and wrong when the effort for southern independence failed. This is, of course, intended as a species of political cant, whereby the crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of the rebellion might go down in history hand in hand with the defenders of the government, thus wiping out with their own hands their own stains; a species of self-forgiveness amazing in its effrontery, when it is considered that life and property—justly forfeited by the laws of the country, of war, and of nations, through the magnanimity of the government and people—was not exacted from them."

"The mind's ability to attend to its own representing activity is a distinct ability, logically presupposed as a condition of experience. (We couldn't be representing objects unless, in all cases of such representing, we could also become conscious of our representing.) ... All consciousness ... is a species of self-consciousness, representing objects is at the same time attending to the mind's activities."

"In any remembering, thinking or imagining, although the object of my intending is some state of affairs or other, I am also potentially aware as I intend that what I am doing is an act of remembering, thinking, or imagining. My asserting that S is P is not an assertion of mine unless I am implicitly aware as I assert that I am asserting, not entertaining the possibility that, S is P."

"Once when Adam had still lived in the trailer park, he had been pushing the lawn mower around the straggly side yard when he realized that it was raining a mile away. He could smell it, the earthy scent of rain on dirt, but also the electric, restless smell of ozone. And he could see it: a hazy sheet of water blocking his view of the mountains. He could track the line of rain travelling across the vast dry field towards him. It was heavy and dark, and he knew he would get drenched if he stayed outside. It was coming from so far away that he had plenty of time to put the mower away and get under cover. Instead, though, he just stood there. he closed his eyes and let the storm soak him. That was this kiss."

"Blue said, "I can't get in this car. Do you know what's happening behind me? I don't even want to look." Henry said, "How about you give me the finger and shout at me now and withdraw with your principles?" He smiled winningly and held up three fingers. He counted to two with devil horns. "This is incredibly unnecessary," Blue told him, but she could feel herself smiling. "Life's a show," he replied. He counted one with his middle finger, and then his face melted into exaggerated shock. Blue shouted, "Drop dead, you bastard!" "FINE!" Henry screamed back, with slightly more hysteria than the role required. He attempted to squeal out of the lot, stopped to take off the parking brake, and then limped out more sedately.""

"His feelings for Adam were an oil spill; he'd let them overflow and now there wasn't a damn place in the ocean that wouldn't catch fire if he dropped a match."

"It was this,: the future hanging heavy in the air, and Henry starting a quiet, drunk conversation about whether or not Blue would like to travel to Venezuela with him. Blue replying softly that she would, she very much would, and Gansey hearing the longing in her voice like he was being undone, like his own feelings were unbearably mirrored. I cant come? Gansey asked. Yes, you can meet us there in a fancy plane, Henry said. Don't be fooled by his fancy hair, Blue interjected, Gansey would hike. And warmth filled the empty caverns in Gansey's heart. He felt known."

"Gansey asked, "Do you have time to run an errand with us? Do you have work? Homework?" "No homework. I got suspended," Blue replied. "Get the fuck out," Ronan said, but with admiration. "Sargent, you asshole." Blue reluctantly allowed him to bump fists with her."

"Do you love him?" Maura asked curiously. "I'd rather not," Blue replied. "He has lots of negative qualities I can help you hone in on," her mother offered. "I'm already aware of them. Infinitely."

""Where the hell is Ronan?" Gansey asked, echoing the words that thousands of humans had uttered since mankind developed speech."

"It was not my finest moment," Henry said. "My car and I have since made amends." "His electric car," Gansey inserted with subtlety, in case Blue had missed the environmental ramifications. Blue narrowed her eyes at Gansey and then pointed out, "You could bike to Aglionby from here." Henry wagged a finger. "True, true. But it is important to practise safe bicycling, and they have not yet made a helmet to accommodate my hair."