“Pleasure and pain are immediate; knowledge, retrospective. A steel ball, suspended on a string, smacks into its brothers and nothing happens: no shock of recognition, no sudden epiphany. We go about our business, buttering the toast, choosing gray socks over… — Mark Slouka Copy Share Image
“My mother knew a man during the war. Theirs was a love story, and like any good love story, it left blood on the… — Mark Slouka Copy Share Image
I distrust the perpetually busy; always have. The frenetic ones spinning in tight little circles like poisoned rats. The slower ones, grinding away their… — Mark Slouka Copy Share Image
“There are times in every life when the past acquires a particular resonance, when we grow sensitive to sounds and voices normally beyond the… — Mark Slouka Copy Share Image
Most of the time when something goes bad—a marriage, a war, a run of good luck—you don’t know it. It’s like in the cartoons, only less funny. You run off the cliff and just keep going—talking, listening to music, making plans, for years sometimes—except no announcer interrupts to say ‘Excuse me, collect call for Mr. Coyote’ to make you notice… — Mark Slouka Copy Share
“Generally speaking, writers who have been at it for a while, and who are any good at it, suffer from an acute kind of… — Mark Slouka Copy Share Image
“Acceptance was not in my nature. Even as a young man it seemed to me that everywhere the world conspired against the heart, and… — Mark Slouka Copy Share Image
“Such is the privilege of survival: to be allowed to fashion the means that fit our ends, to cobble together a narrative that reveals… — Mark Slouka Copy Share Image
“Literature is literature. Its purpose is to challenge and disorient us, to break us down a little bit so that we are forced to… — Mark Slouka Copy Share Image
“The only thing your life teaches you is how to live your life. And that’s only if you’re very lucky. And you listen very… — Mark Slouka Copy Share Image
“And yet, far off, I can hear something whispering that this compulsion to do, to intrude ourselves, to improve on what is--even when wholly… — Mark Slouka Copy Share Image
“I lost my father this past year, and the word feels right because I keep looking for him. As if he were misplaced. As… — Mark Slouka Copy Share Image
