Admiring Silence

Living among strangers for such a time, I had long ago lost that casual assurance, that ability to lean back comfortably, scratch my moustache and chat

There were stories, in the first place, stories to fill the hours and the mind in the contest with life, to lift the ordinary into metaphor, to make it seem that the time of my passing was a choice in my hands, that there was method in the manner of my coming and my going. That is what stories can do, they can push the feeble disorders we live with out of sight

He spoke with the care and modulation of someone who knew that people were listening

in time he would become respectably poor and increasingly pedantic, the way teachers did

I don’t think she did it to be cruel. It was just that she liked to win her arguments, and not always without charm

I stumble about in this sullen thicket, hoping that I will bump into the moment of release.