Strangers on a Train

“I know you have it in you, Guy,” Anne said suddenly at the end of a silence, “the capacity to be terribly happy.”

“Sometimes, Guy, I feel you’re happy again. At the funniest times.”

At times, failure was a possibility that fascinated him

Suddenly it seemed that all love was only a tantalizing, a horrible next-best to knowing.

Know what else I’ll do some day? Commit suicide if I happen to feel like committing suicide, and fix it so it looks like my worst enemy murdered me.”

All he despised, Guy thought, Bruno represented. All the things he would not want to be, Bruno was, or would become.

The bottle slipped out of Owen's fingers and fell onto the floor, but there was so little in it now that almost nothing spilled. "You're an architect, aren't you?" Owen asked. "I remember now." He righted the bottle clumsily, leaving it on the floor.

He remembered one brilliant and powerful thought that had come to him last night watching a televised shuffleboard game: the way to see the world was to see it drunk. Everything was created to be seen drunk. Certainly this wasn't the way to see the world, with his head splitting every time he turned his eyes.

THE LEADEN-EYED by Vachel Lindsay

Let not young souls be smothered out before
They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride.
It is the world’s one crime its babes grow dull,
Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed.
Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly,
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap,
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve,
Not that they die, but that they die like sheep.

“That’s the mistake,” Guy said aloud, “that nobody knows what a murderer looks like. A murderer looks like anybody!”