Of course there’s another choice, he thought. There is always another choice. I’m just not going to take it.

Curiosity is a terrible thing, he was thinking. How is it possible to stop oneself from needing to know?

I am your friend,” Gous said. “I drank with you, didn’t I?”Kline tried to nod but nothing happened. He could see the wrappings around Gous’ hand staining with blood.“Besides,” said Gous, “friendship is one thing, God another.

There is, in every event, whether lived or told, always a hole or a gap, often more than one. If we allow ourselves to get caught in it, we find it opening onto a void that, once we have slipped into it, we can never escape.

Anything can happen: anything. Or nothing. Who can say? The world, monstrous, is made that way, and in the end consumes us all. Who am I, administrated or no, to have the audacity to survive it?