out of context

I just finished Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke. I'm not sure yet what to make of it, though I'm compelled to place it in one of my favorite categories of fiction: post-apocaplytic. Johnson's Fiskadoro belongs there, as does McCarthy's The Road. Each is brutal in its hopeless beauty.

Anyway, I marked three pages because of brief little passages I found compelling. I do this all the time, but never do anything with it. So, for a change, at least I can share the quotes, completely out of context.

"There's no traveling side by side in the narrow places. In the narrow places you climb alone. It has to be enough to believe there's somebody behind you."

***

"What comes is the coming thing. I just look on it like whatever madness takes a dump on me, it must be a lesson, man, a lesson some random-ass sadistic Hitler-God wants me to learn. That's why I don't like it."

***

"Why must we have any legacy at all? Things are destroyed over and over, the good things and bad things. [...] The same thing for all of us--ashes, dust, poof, that's our legacy."

wisdom from 'zines

From Burn Collector 13, a most prescient observation about real estate:

"Location, location, location:" these are the three principle tenets of real estate, a modern pseudo-science that combines the more forward-thinking aspects of eugenics with the common-sense economics of a compulsive gambler on crystal meth.