Twilight of the Superheroes: Stories

It’s incredible, I can’t ever quite wrap my head around it—that each life is amazingly abundant, no matter what, and every moment of experience is so intense. But so little evidence of that exists outside the living body! Billions of intense, abundant human lives on this earth, Nana’s among them, vanishing. Leaving nothing more than inscrutable little piles of commemorative trash.

It’s pretty clear, he was saying, the things people know about each other in an instant are the important things. But all right, let’s say the important things aren’t everything. Let’s say the unimportant things count, too—even a lot. The point is, though, we can spend as long as we like learning those unimportant things about each other. We can spend years, if we want, or we can spend a few hours. If you want, I can bring you back here tomorrow We can say goodbye now, if you want.

Harry sipped a cognac and regarded them with melancholy affection. They were still young, almost young. For an instant he could see, as if it were incandescently mapped, the path of years that lay ahead of each of them, its particular sorrows, joys, terrors …

I had my secretary specifically request the view. They swore she never did, but a people which is known for its charm is not often known also for its honesty

“I never get used to anything... I mean, except for the things that aren’t happening any longer.”

Kate contemplated him as he talked decoratively on. One had to acknowledge, even admire, such energy, so strong a will to enjoy, to entertain, even if, as was clearly the case, it was only to entertain himself.

You couldn’t feel love once it was gone. What you could feel for a long time was the sorrow of its fading, like the burning afterimage of a setting sun. And then that was gone, too. What she would remember for the rest of her life was the fact, at least, of the shocking pain they’d been forced to inflict on one another. Eventually when they’d touched, it was like touching a wound.

The wars in the East were hidden behind a thicket of language: patriotism, democracy, loyalty, freedom—the words bounced around, changing purpose, as if they were made out of some funny plastic. What did they actually refer to? It seemed that they all might refer to money.

It was as if there had been a curtain, a curtain painted with the map of the earth, its oceans and continents, with Lucien’s delightful city. The planes struck, tearing through the curtain of that blue September morning, exposing the dark world that lay right behind it, of populations ruthlessly exploited, inflamed with hatred, and tired of waiting for change to happen by.