Sublime

He would then proceed to startle and goad the earnest and morose, briskly crushing their fashionable and half-baked preconceptions.

To deny the external and unpredictable made self-possession hardly worth the price. Like settling for a future without coincidence or luck.

Marathe wondered why the presence of Americans could always make him feel vaguely ashamed after saying things he believed. An aftertaste of shame after revealing passion of any belief and type when with Americans, as if he had made flatulence instead of had revealed belief.

here, plainly, Updike is more interested in his personal filing-system than in his normal courteousness towards the reader.

How strange, I thought, looking upon his sad, kind face, that this man had once been my entire world, and yet we could come to no final understanding of one another. He was a man who’d done far more than most to end the suffering of a people whose toil was the very source of his power; he had risked his own good comfort, the love of his family, his

Pérez nodded thoughtfully. Even in a place like this where we are concerned with fundamental things the mind of the anglo is closed in this rare way. At one time I thought it was only his life of privilege. But it is not that. It is his mind. He sat back easily. He tapped his temple. It is not that he is stupid. It is that his picture of the world

it’s an absolute goddamned travesty, or at any rate extremely dissatisfying indeed.

vicissitude

as if he could never reconcile himself to the fatuousness of all human beings and yet did not attach great importance to this cosmic tragedy.