Downtown Owl: A Novel

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.

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.

Their wedding was picturesque and well attended. She was vivacious and loquacious, which made her flirtatious. Words ending in -ious are bad for marriages. Her

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.

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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.

His quadriceps stored enough lactic acid to turn a triceratops into limestone.

Tonight. You can meet my boyfriend. Well, he’s actually not my boyfriend—I’m married and I don’t cheat on my husband, but I still have a boyfriend. You know what I mean? You know what I mean. You know what I mean. So if you have an extra liver, you might want to throw it into your glove box. I might need to chew on it.”

Their misplaced adoration makes them seem foolish and immature, so you cannot reciprocate their respect. It instantaneously makes the relationship unbalanced. And this imbalance makes you feel guilty, so you start to unconsciously resent the idolization. Over time, you find yourself hating people for loving you too much, which seems like a terrible