![Preview of The Pale King: An Unfinished Novel](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51Ln+xpBgTL.jpg)
updated 2d ago
updated 2d ago
Being in a conversation makes the time pass differently; it’s not clear whether it’s better or worse.
He wore an archaically conservative dark-gray suit whose boxy look might have been actual flannel, and his dress shoes’ shine was dazzling when the classroom’s overhead fluorescents hit them at the proper angle. He seemed lithe and precise; his movements had the brisk economy of a man who knows time is a valuable asset.
The idea that people feel just one basic emotion at a time is a further contrivance of memoirs.
There was a horrific piece of graffiti incised with knife or leather punch in the plastic of the seatback in front of me, which I looked at twice and then made a point of never looking directly at again.
It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.
His mother called her down to earth and liked her, thought she was good people, you could tell—she made this evident in little ways.
The one who’d asked had a sideburn and the invulnerable smile of someone who’s had two airport cocktails and nothing but nuts.
One of the quirks of real human memory is that the most vivid, detailed recall doesn’t usually concern the things that are most germane. The as it were forest. It’s not just that real memory is fragmentary; I think it’s also that overall relevance and meaning are conceptual, while the experiential bits that get locked down and are easiest, years la
... See moreThe girl in cotton bodice and her jeans gone fugitive at the knees.
Routine, repetition, tedium, monotony, ephemeracy, inconsequence, abstraction, disorder, boredom, angst, ennui—these are the true hero’s enemies, and make no mistake, they are fearsome indeed. For they are real.’