“In the wasteland of metro Boston, at thirteen, fourteen, his big dream had been of a gun to his own head, putting him out of his misery—a misery that by sophomore year of college was indistinguishable from everybody else's.” — Garth Risk Hallberg Copy Share Image
“College stirred in her a certain contempt for virtues like kindness and persistence. She would have appeared to have been a kind and persistent person herself, but a steady diet of Antonioni films and an introductory course on existentialism had… — Garth Risk Hallberg Copy Share Image
“Despite which, Charlie seems doomed to stumble around in the dark, clutching pieces of a puzzle he still can't see.” — Garth Risk Hallberg Copy Share Image
“He’d wanted it to be about losing, about the things we’re born into loving and then lose.” — Garth Risk Hallberg Copy Share Image
“Though what could anyone really say these days with one hundred percent certainty?” — Garth Risk Hallberg Copy Share Image
“Detonations crash in from nearby like walls she's a void at the center of.” — Garth Risk Hallberg Copy Share Image
“Because if every moment of a life is present in every other, so is every old self you've ever tried to outrun. And then… — Garth Risk Hallberg Copy Share Image
“Between the whiskers scraggling down his neck and the now-crooked glasses, he could have been the Black Allen Ginsberg.” — Garth Risk Hallberg Copy Share Image
“But no, what interested him, psychologically speaking, was the sense of continuity itself, the mind's insistence that this was the same Regan he'd known… — Garth Risk Hallberg Copy Share Image
“He lights a cigarette off a candle. These death-tubes, these little crutches or fuses: useful for getting through all sorts of things you don't… — Garth Risk Hallberg Copy Share Image
“Truly unconditional love was suffocating, in that it took so little notice of who you actually were.” — Garth Risk Hallberg Copy Share Image
“And so she remained, like everything that mattered to me then, secret—to be pursued in the woods by moonlight, when I was supposed to… — Garth Risk Hallberg Copy Share Image
“Now, though, there was a second part, an artifact of his recent illness, as if his melancholy had, in a universe adjacent to this… — Garth Risk Hallberg Copy Share Image
“Darkness just loosens the mask. Sharpens the mind's eye. Makes the color of a remembered pencil, or a tick of waxy red on a… — Garth Risk Hallberg Copy Share Image
