Downtown Owl: A Novel

Most of the time they didn’t even realize they were rich; almost without exception, they wrongly viewed themselves as middle-class. But there’s no such thing as middle-class. The middle class does not exist. If you believe you are part of the middle class, it just means you’re rich and insecure or poor and misinformed.

—What difference would that make? You seem to think there is a big distinction between knowing things and not knowing things. There isn’t. There’s a difference, but it’s negligible. Like, I knew about Medora, and you didn’t. But what does that mean, really? What does it indicate? —Well, you

Sometimes she listened to Kissing to Be Clever on her Walkman, but the device used up its AA batteries almost instantaneously. Rewinding Boy George cassettes was like smoking clove cigarettes inside an oxygen tent: diminishing returns.

Like all self-destructive creatures, she completely meant these words, but only while she spoke them.

Today’s afternoon coffee was stronger than usual, depositing black acid bitterness into the blood of its disciples. It was an entertaining anomaly. The old men embraced their caffeinated anger. It felt good.

catawampus

Sleeping pills help people reach sleep; fatal familial insomnia makes sleep unreachable. The protein in Alma’s brain had changed, and it could not be changed back.

emotive intensity of an attraction devoid of explanation. Julia knew this was ridiculous. She felt like a ridiculous person. She did not care. It was so much fun to imagine theoretical conversations the two of them might have, and to mentally replay their previous conversations in the hope of finding subtext.

As far as Horace could decipher, destiny was a concept that forced you to live a certain kind of life on purpose, even though you were already living that life by accident. And that seemed immoral, not to mention stupid. Why would existence be designed as a redundant system? Destiny made God seem like an unconfident engineer.