Neverwhere: A Novel
It’s an ingredient in us. In the world. Poured over us, filtering into our bodies, minds, hearts, into the pavement itself. Why? We’re blind moles. Creeping through the soil, feeling with our snouts. We know nothing. I perceived this … now I don’t know where to go. Screech with fear, only. Run away.
Philip K. Dick • The Man in the High Castle (Penguin Modern Classics)
When it was all gone, the dream of floating toward bursting stars, and the flesh returned to hold my blood in its prosaic channels, when the room returned, the dirty sordid room, the vacant meaningless ceiling, the weary wasted world, I felt nothing but the old sense of guilt, the sense of crime and violation, the sin of destruction.
John Fante • Ask the Dust
Looking at her innocently holding the wineglass stirred the most delicate parts of his mind. She drank when invited. She trusted the world and had no wariness about it at all. Yes, everything in the world was lying in wait to hurt her, except here. She needed to be cared for here. This was her castle.