I find it difficult to understand the kind of human being who lives, or who is sure he can live, purely, happily, serenely while engaged in deceit.

Everything he said seemed exceedingly obvious, and undoubtedly true, but I felt sure that something more obscure, more frightening lurked in the hearts of human beings. Greed did not cover it, nor did vanity. Nor was it simply a combination of lust and greed. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I felt that there was something inexplicable at the bottom of human society which was not reducible to economics.

People talk of “social outcasts.” The words apparently denote the miserable losers of the world, the vicious ones, but I feel as though I have been a “social outcast” from the moment I was born. If ever I meet someone society has designated as an outcast, I invariably feel affection for him, an emotion which carries me away in melting tenderness.

She lay down beside me. Towards dawn she pronounced for the first time the word “death.” She too seemed to be weary beyond endurance of the task of being a human being; and when I reflected on my dread of the world and its bothersomeness, on money, the movement, women, my studies, it seemed impossible that I could go on living. I consented easily to her proposal.

We threw ourselves into the sea at Kamakura that night. She untied her sash, saying she had borrowed it from a friend at the café, and left it folded neatly on a rock. I removed my coat and put it in the same spot. We entered the water together. She died. I was saved.

I thought instead of the dead Tsuneko, and, longing for her, I wept. Of all the people I had ever known, that miserable Tsuneko really was the only one I loved.

It was rather that I had a strangulating fear of that cataclysmic change in the atmosphere the instant the flow of a conversation flagged, and even when I knew that it would later turn to my disadvantage, I frequently felt obliged to add, almost inadvertently, my word of embellishment, out of a desire to please born of my usual desperate mania for service.

At the time I relied entirely on gin and never took sleeping pills. Insomnia, however, was a chronic complaint with me, and I was familiar with most sleeping pills. The contents of this one box of Dial was unquestionably more than sufficient to cause death. The seal of the box was unbroken. I must have hidden it here at some time or other in the past when I felt I might need it, after first scratching off the label. The poor child could not read Western letters, and I must have thought it was enough if I just scratched off with my nails the part of the label in Japanese. (You have committed no sin.)

I suppose it would be no exaggeration to say that the world is composed entirely of unhappy people. But those people can fight their unhappiness with society fairly and squarely, and society for its part easily understands and sympathizes with such struggles. My unhappiness stemmed entirely from my own vices, and I had no way of fighting anybody.

“I want to die. I want to die more than ever before. There’s no chance now of a recovery. No matter what sort of thing I do, no matter what I do, it’s sure to be a failure, just a final coating applied to my shame. That dream of going on bicycles to see a waterfall framed in summer leaves—it was not for the likes of me. All that can happen now is that one foul, humiliating sin will be piled on another, and my sufferings will become only the more acute. I want to die. I must die. Living itself is the source of sin.

My son has bandages on his head and so did Apollinaire when he was wounded on the field of battle. On a dark and lonely battlefield I have never seen, my son was wounded like Apollinaire and now he is screaming soundlessly. …

But he had only to think to himself about the baby’s abnormality and a sense of extremely personal shame hotly rose into his throat. How could he discuss the misfortune with other people; it was inherent in himself! He had the feeling this would never be a problem he could share with the rest of mankind.

Bird broke the seal on the bottle with his fingernail and poured himself a drink. His arm was still shaking: the glass chattered at the bottle like an angry rat. Bird scowled thornily, a hermetic old man, and hurled the whisky down his throat. God, it burned! Coughing shook him and his eyes teared. But the arrow of red-hot pleasure pierced his belly instantly, and the shuddering stopped. Bird brought up a child’s belch redolent of wild strawberries, wiped his wet lips with the back of his hand, and filled his glass again, this time with a steady hand.

Every time you stand at a crossroads of life and death, you have two universes in front of you; one loses all relation to you because you die, the other maintains its relation to you because you survive in it. Just as you would take off your clothes, you abandon the universe in which you only exist as a corpse and move on to the universe in which you are still alive. In other words, various universes emerge around each of us the way tree limbs and leaves branch away from the trunk.

But Himiko’s sides and the swell of her belly, almost hidden under the blanket, did not evoke nostalgia. There was a suggestion there of the fat which age was beginning to plant in her body. And that hint of flabbiness was a part of Himiko’s new life; it had nothing to do with Bird. The fatty roots beneath her skin would probably spread like fire and transform completely the shape of her body. Her breasts, too, would lose the little youth and freshness they retained.

Bird glanced into an oval mirror that was hanging on a pillar just inside the room and saw oil and sweat glistening from forehead to nose, lips parted with ragged breathing, clouded eyes that clearly were turned in upon themselves: it was the face of a pervert. Jolted by sudden disgust, Bird looked away quickly, but already his face had engraved its impression behind his eyes. A presentiment like a solemn promise grazed his flushed head: from now on I’ll suffer often from the memory of this face.

It’s the kind of thing I was talking about. I have this feeling there’s what you’d call another universe back in there. It’s dark, it’s infinite, it’s teeming with everything antihuman: a grotesque universe. And I’m afraid that if I entered it, I’d get trapped in the time system of another dimension and wouldn’t be able to return—my fear has certain resemblances to an astronaut’s fantastic acrophobia!

I’m trampling a woman now in the most ignominious way! I’m capable of all that’s meanest and most vile, I’m shame itself, the hot mass my  penis is rending now is really me, he raged, and was smitten by an orgasm of such intensity that it made his head swim.

One day Bird had approached his father with this question; he was six years old: Father, where was I a hundred years before I was born? Where will I be a hundred years after I’m dead? Father, what will happen to me when I die? Without a word, his young father had punched him in the mouth, broke two of his teeth and bloodied his face, and Bird forgot his fear of death.

“Have you forgotten that you drove the car into a pothole today rather than run over a dead sparrow? Is that what a person does just before he cuts a baby’s throat?”

“Several people were gathered around the table, at the head of which a young woman, tall and slender and fair, dressed in a gown of blue watered silk, stood pouring tea into gold-rimmed china cups. Stoner paused in the doorway, caught by his vision of the young woman. Her long, delicately featured face smiled at those around her, and her slender, almost fragile fingers deftly manipulated urn and cup; looking at her, Stoner was assailed by a consciousness of his own heavy clumsiness” (Williams 46).

“Grace’s already slender body was becoming thinner; Edith laughed gently about her “growing up but not out.” Her eyes were becoming watchful, almost wary; the expression that had once been quietly serene was now either faintly sullen at one extreme or gleeful and animated on the thin edge of hysteria at the other; she seldom smiled any more, although she laughed a great deal. And when she did smile, it was as if a ghost flitted across her face” (Williams 127).

“But William Stoner knew of the world in a way that few of his younger colleagues could understand. Deep in him, beneath his memory, was the knowledge of hardship and hunger and endurance and pain. Though he seldom thought of his early years on the Booneville farm, there was always near his consciousness the blood knowledge of his inheritance, given him by forefathers whose lives were obscure and hard and stoical and whose common ethic was to present to an oppressive world faces that were expressionless and hard and bleak” (Williams 227).

“His thoughts were much upon death that summer of 1918. The death of Masters had shocked him more than he wished to admit; and the first American casualty lists from Europe were beginning to be released. When he had thought of death before, he had thought of it either as a literary event or as the slow, quiet attrition of time against imperfect flesh. He had not thought of it as the explosion of violence upon a battlefield, as the gush of blood from the ruptured throat. He wondered at the difference between the two kinds of dying, and what the difference meant; and he found growing in him some of that bitterness he had glimpsed once in the living heart of his friend David Masters” (Stoner 40).

“He opened the book; and as he did so it became not his own. He left his fingers rifle through the pages and felt a tingling, as if those pages were alive. The tingling came through his fingers and coursed through his flesh and bone; he was minutely aware of it, and he waited until it contained him, until the old excitement that was like terror fixed him where he lay. The sunlight, passing his window, shone upon the page, and he could not see what was written there. The fingers loosened, and the book they had held moved slowly and then swiftly across the still body and fell into the silence of the room” (Williams 288).

“Besides the long fleshy bags under his little, always insolent, suspicious, ironical eyes; besides the multitude of deep wrinkles in his little fat face, the Adam's apple hung below his sharp chin like a great, fleshy goiter, which gave him a peculiar, repulsive, sensual appearance; add to that a long rapacious mouth with full lips, between which could be seen little stumps of black decayed teeth. He slobbered every time he began to speak. He was fond indeed of making fun of his own face, though, I believe, he was well satisfied with it. He used particularly to point to his nose, which was not very large, but very delicate and conspicuously aquiline. 'A regular Roman nose,' he used to say,'with my goiter I've quite the countenance of an ancient Roman patrician of the decadent period.' He seemed proud of it" (Dostoevsky 18).

"And yet he could not be quit of the past, of all that he had left behind and that tortured him. He felt that miserably, and the thought of it sank into his heart with despair. There was one moment when he felt an impulse to stop Andrey, to jump out of the cart, to pull out his loaded pistol, and to make an end of everything without waiting for the dawn. But that moment flew by like a spark. The horses galloped on, "devouring space," and as he drew near his goal, again the thought of her, of her alone, took more and more complete possession of his soul, chasing away the fearful images that had been haunting it" (Dostoevsky 378).

“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself” (Dostoevsky 36).

"If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral; everything would be lawful, even cannibalism” (Dostoevsky 58).

"He seemed suddenly to feel an acute pain in his chest, he turned pale and pressed his hands to his heart. All rose from their seats and hastened to him. But though suffering, he still looked at them with a smile, sank slowly from his chair on to his knees, then bowed his face to the ground, stretched out his arms and as though in joyful ecstasy, praying and kissing the ground, quietly and joyfully gave up his soul to God" (Dostoevsky 296).

“The dim light he discharged was now his dearest companion, Oleg's ghost, the phantom of freedom. He experienced a blend of anguish and exultation, a kind of amorous joy, the like of which he had last known on the day of his coronation, when, as he walked to his throne, a few bars of incredibly rich, deep, plenteous music (whose authorship and physical source he was never able to ascertain) struck his ear, and he inhaled the hair oil of the pretty page who had bent to brush a rose petal off the footstool, and by the light of his torch the King now saw that he was hideously garbed in bright red" (Nabokov 132).

"The gist, rather than the actual plot of the dream, was a constant refutation of his not loving her. His dream-love for her exceeded in emotional tone, in spiritual passion and depth, anything he had experienced in his surface existence. The love was like an endless wringing of hands, like a blundering of the soul through an infinite maze of hopelessness and remorse. They were, in a sense, amorous dreams, for they were permeated with tenderness, with a longing to sink his head onto her lap and sob away the monstrous past" (Nabokov 210).

“I even suggested to him a good title-the title of the book in me whose pages he has to cut: Solus Rex; instead of which I saw Pale Fire, which meant to me nothing. I started to read the poem. I read faster and faster. I sped through it, snarling, as a furious young heir through an old deceiver’s testament. Where were the battlements of my sunset castle? Where was Zembla the Fair? Where her spine of mountains? Where her long thrill through the mist? And my lovely flower boys, and the spectrum of the stained windows, and the Black Rose Paladins, and the whole marvelous tale? Nothing of it was there! The complex contribution I had pressing upon him with a hypnotist’s patience and a lover’s urge was simply not there” (Nabokov 296).

“Line 681: gloomy Russians spied There is really nothing metaphysical, or racial, about this gloom. It is merely the outward sign of congested nationalism and a provincial's sense of inferiority-that dreadful blend so typical of Zemblans under the Extremist rule and of Russians under the Soviet regime. Ideas in modern Russia are machine-cut blocks coming in solid colors; the nuance is outlawed, the interval walled up, the curve grossly stepped" (Nabokov 243).

“Down you go, but all the while you feel like a somnolent turbulent pigeon, and sprawl supine on the eiderdown of the air, or lazily turn to embrace your pillow, enjoying every last instant of soft, deep, death-padded life, with the earth's green seesaw now above, now below, the voluptuous crucifixion , as you stretch yourself in the growing rush, in the nearing swish, and then your loved body's obliteration in the Lap of the Lord" (Nabokov 221).

"Then in the instant when she rose up it was as if everybody awoke, it became clear to them all that she really meant business, she was going through with it, all the way, she was holding in her hand the wire that connected all the pins it all the grenades beneath her gown, all those fatal breasts, and although at that moment Buta and Dara rushed at her she pulled the wire anyway, and the walls came tumbling down. No, not death: birth" (Rushdie 87).

"She came to think of Elena as a soul in torment, to believe that this captivity in an immobile world of girlie calendars in which she wore breasts of moulded plastic, three times larger than her own; of pseudo-erotica snarls; of advertising messages printed across her navel, was no less than Elena's personal hell. Allie began to see the scream in her sister's eyes, the anguish of being trapped forever in those fashion spreads. Elena was being tortured by demons, consumed in fires, and she couldn't even move… after a time Allie had to avoid the shops in which her sister could be found staring from the racks. She lost the ability to open magazines, and hid all the pictures of Elena she owned" (Rushdie 307).

“‘Will you merely lie down before this false prophet, this Dajjal? Can honour be expected of a man who is preparing to storm the city of his birth? Can compromise be hoped for from the uncompromising, pity from the pitiless? We are the mighty of Jahilia, and our goddesses, glorious in battle, will prevail.’ She commands them to fight in the name of Al-Lat. But the people begin to leave” (Rushdie 371).

“'We always forgive ourselves by blaming outsiders, America, Pakistan, any damn place. Excuse me, George, but for me it goes back to Assam, we have to start with that.' The massacre of the innocents. Photographs of children's corpses, arranged neatly in lines like soldiers on parade. They had been clubbed to death, pelted with stones, their necks cut in half with knives. Those neat ranks of death, Chamcha remembered. As if only horror could sting India into orderliness" (Rushdie 56).

“Walk quickly, out of this wrong place, this underworld. -God: no escape. Here’s a shop-front, a store selling musical instruments, trumpets saxophones oboes, what’s the name? - Fair Winds, and here in the window is a cheaply printed handbill. Announcing the imminent return of, that’s right, the Archangel Gibreel. His return and the salvation of the earth. Walk. Walk away fast” (Rushdie 418).

“My first blow sheared off the sailor’s skull, my second tore into the front of his tunic, pulling the torso free from the rest of the skeleton. The legs were in crumbled pieces; I shoveled past them into lain sand glinting with mica. Then it was maggot nests and entrails and a blood-mattered crinoline dress and sand and odd bones and nothing-and then it was sunburned pink skin and blond eyebrows covered with stitch scars that looked familiar. Then Lee was smiling like the Dahlia, with worms creeping out of his mouth and the holes where his eyes used to be” (Ellroy 226).

“Lee kicked his chair over and shouted: ‘Who gives a fuck if he didn’t kill her! I’ve sent Boy scouts to the green room for less than that! So if you won’t do something about it, I will!’ Everyone sat there, shock-stilled. Lee stood in front of the screen, blinking from the hot white light in his eyes. He wheeled and ripped the obscenity down; the screen and tripod hit the floor with a crash” (Ellroy 147).

“On the plane I thought of all the things I’d have to explain to Kay, evidence of a new foundation of lies from destroying the two-or three-of us. She would have to know that I was a detective without a badge, that for one month in the year 1949 I possessed brilliance and courage and the will to make sacrifices. She would have to know that the heat of that time would make me vulnerable, prey to dark curiosities. She would have to believe that my strongest resolve was not to let any of it hurt her. And she had to know that it was Elizabeth Short who was giving us our second chance” (Ellroy 325).

“On foot, the squalor was worse. The kiddie beggars got right up in your face, jabbering, shoving crucifixes at you. Fritzie swatted and kicked them away, but their hunger-ridden faces got to me, so I changed a fiver into pesos and tossed handfuls of coins into the gutter whenever they converged. It spawned scratching, biting and gouging free-for-alls, but it was better than looking into sunken eyes and seeing nada” (Ellroy 159).

“The cuts went all the way down to the bone, but the worst of the worst was the girl’s face. It was one huge purpled bruise, the nose crushed deep into the facial cavity, the mouth cut ear to ear into a smile that leered up at you, somehow mocking the rest of the brutality inflicted. I knew I would carry that smile with me to the grave” (Ellroy 69).