“Mr. O'Donnell was at the library counter, performing the sort of grim rituals librarians perform with index cards and stumpy pencils and those rubber stamps with columns of rotating numbers. "Ms. Auerbach! What will it be today? Camus? Cervantes?" "Actually… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
“Hell is only loneliness, a place without play for the soul, a place without God. How could there be God in loneliness when God… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
“Having to talk to people was the one thing, but soliciting conversation was something else. If I acted squirmy or didn't make eye contact,… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
“I shook my head. I couldn't remember the time before, or the way it used to be. There were things we used to do, factual things, and those were easy to recall--playing, biking, singing. As for the things we'd conjured and believed, those were harder to recapture. I wondered if ideals existed only because there was so much to be… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share
“They were sorting, or classifying. It's easy-anyone dressed funny is the enemy, especially if they reject your supremacy or do not acknowledge school as… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
“The families of graduating seniors emptied out of cars, sheepish in uncommon splendor, like milling clans at the origin of a parade. There is… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
And loneliness. I should say something of loneliness. The panic, the sweeping hysteria that comes not when you are without others, but when you are without yourself, adrift. I should describe the filthy province of mind, the blighted district inside, the place so crowded you cannot raise the eyelids of your eyes. Your shoulders are drawn and your head has… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share
“My mother refuses to go into the ocean. She respects it, she says, which is basically the same as saying she's afraid. I go… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
“The unusual thing about quiet is that when you seek it, it is almost impossible to achieve. When you strive for quiet, you become impatient, and impatience is itself a noiseless noise. You can block every superficial sound, but, with each new layer extinguished, a next rises up, finer and more entrapping, until you arrive at last in the infinite… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share
“I liked the idea of marking the place where a life ends as opposed to the place a corpse is buried. And also the idea of leaving remains uncollected. It's bad enough being dead, but it's worse to have people see you dead, and to have living hands feel a dead you, jostle and dress you, push your stiffening arms… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share
“My hand reaches for his eye. He does not pull away but breathes into my touch. His normal lid drifts closed, and beneath my fingertips the distended one throbs, as if the eye below is straining to see. In his heart there is a girl; she is me. No contract keeps her; she goes with him, she goes alone, precipice… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share
“Envy is awful. Unlike jealousy, which comes from the threat of losing what you cherish, envy is a dark desire for things over which… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
