Sublime

more likely reason was that he liked the broken leg, the splinters sticking out, and the rough branch bound to it. It made the chair more interesting. “This, this,” he thought when he looked at it. He seemed to enjoy whatever was happening, and was a good host to whatever guest arrived. If it was cold, he enjoyed winter and the fire; if it was hot,

John Updike’s The Centaur,

Not handsome, exactly—in fact, he teetered on the edge of ugly: short and slightly stocky, with thinning black hair. But his skin was deeply tanned, as though he flew to the Mediterranean instead of the endless Minneapolis-Detroit-Chicago route, and his thick lips were sensual, his teeth startling white. He exuded a vitality and alertness that was

This was the introduction to Terry Pratchett’s non-fiction collection, A Slip of the Keyboard, 2014.

I see this girl, Vanden, for a while, who paints my futon frame black and who stopped seeing me because she said she saw “a spider the size of Norman Mailer” in my bathroom. I didn’t ask her who Norman Mailer was, and I didn’t ask her to come back.

“If you’re ever in Cody, Wyoming,” he told himself, “just ask for Wild Bob.”

Morris Schutt is stumbling towards a discovery of himself, attempting to understand how one should live the best life.