
The Outsider

Where the horrors of actual human suffering fell short, his own imagination provided the more-extreme elements, transforming the merely shocking into the truly appalling. No depth had he not plumbed. From no horror had he averted his eyes.
Chuck Palahniuk • Make Something Up
C’est curieux, cette volonté d’établir un bilan, de se persuader au moment ultime qu’on a vécu ; ou peut-être que pas du tout, c’est le contraire qui est affreux et étrange, il est affreux et étrange de penser à tous ces hommes, à toutes ces femmes qui n’ont rien à raconter, qui n’envisagent d’autre destin futur que de se dissoudre dans un vague co
... See moreMichel Houellebecq • Sérotonine (French Edition)
In his novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy writes, of the terminally ill Ivan: “The syllogism . . . ‘Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal,’ had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. . . . He was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from
... See moreGeorge Saunders • A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: From the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo
He read the suicide story twice against the racket of steel blades grinding single estate beans. Something rankled. There was a prolonged and dangerous-sounding hissing, and a solitary stream of espresso poured into a white cup. Edward Fellowes jumped from the bridge late on Thursday night. But there were any number of bridges along the Tyne, why w
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