My Favorite Paragraphs

Moloch or, This Gentile World "A pale finger of light invaded the room upstairs. They undressed in the tense silence, shy and oppressed by the heavy gloom in which the room seemed to float. In the dark nuptial loam which they had rediscovered their desires expanded and fructified. Scalding tears trickled down the white of his flesh and caressed him. They were her tears. They burned into the lymph and tissue of his organism until they were identified with the adulterous specters of forgotten loves ... " (Grove Press, 1992. Page 241.)

 Ironweed "When Francis opened the trunk lid the odor of lost time filled the attic air, a cloying reek of imprisoned flowers that unsettled the dust and fluttered the window shades. Francis felt drugged by the scent of the reconstituted past, and then stunned by his first look inside the trunk, for there, staring out from a photo, was his own face at age nineteen. The picture lay among rolled socks and a small American flag, a Washington Senators cap, a pile of newspaper clippings and other photos, all in a scatter on the trunk's tray. Francis stared up at himself from the bleachers in Chadwick Park on a day in 1899, his face unlined, his teeth all there, his collar open, his hair unruly in the afternoon's breeze. He lifted the picture for a closer look and saw himself among a group of men, tossing a baseball from bare right hand to gloved left hand. The flight of the ball had always made this photo mysterious to Francis, for the camera had caught the ball clutched in one...

 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Captain Nemo is replying to a question from the narrator: "You like the sea, Captain?" "Yes, I love it! The seas is everything. It covers sever-tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy, it is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides. The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence, It is nothing but love and emotions; it is the 'Living Infinite,' as one of your poets has said. In fact, professor, Nature manifests herself in it by her three kingdoms, mineral, vegetable and animal. The Seas is the vast reservoir of Nature. The globe began supreme tranquility. The seas does not belong to despots. Upon its surface men can still exercise unjust laws, fight, tear one another to pieces and be carried away with terrestrial horrors. But at thirty feet be low its level, their reign ceases, their influence is quenched, and their power disappears. Ah! si...