Tall people appeared to have it easy; that was what Kugel found so galling. Like things just went their way. Let’s go buy a house! Let’s get expensive diving watches! Why not, we’re tall!

He imagined the scene at the gates of heaven to be not unlike that at the finish line of a long and grueling marathon: everyone high-fiving, hugging, collapsing, elated that it’s over, yes, it’s finally over, pouring cups of water over one another’s heads and saying, Holy shit, dude, that was fucking brutal. I am never doing that again.

THAT NIGHT, lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, Kugel thought he heard a gentle tapping on the vent, but decided that he hadn’t. Maybe he had. He hadn’t.

Maybe Godot shows up in act three, my son; maybe the audience is just leaving too early. ESTRAGON: Where’d they all go? VLADIMIR: They were just here.

THE SUN WAS IN THE SKY like a something.

You never see a lion crucifying another lion. You never see a bear just randomly murdering salmon for anything besides food; bears don’t form armies, invade rivers, tear the heads off male salmon, rape the female salmon, and enslave their salmon children.

Has a gun owner ever, in the history of the weapon, been satisfied with a small gun? If a small gun can save me, he figures, what can a big gun save? What can the biggest gun save? What can a bomb save?

when someone rises up and promises that things are going to be better, run. Hide. Pessimists don’t build gas chambers.

I’m Miss Holocaust, 1945.