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Richard Papen: As it happened, I knew Gartrell. He was a bad painter and a vicious gossip, with a vocabulary composed almost entirely of obscenities, ...more

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And what does a person with such romantic temperament seek in the study of the classics?"If by romantic you mean solitary and introspective, I think r...more

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I have only to glance over my shoulder for all those years to drop away and I see it behind me again, the ravine, rising all green and black through t...more

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The ceilings had set off a ghostly echo, giving all that desperate hilarity the quality of a memory even as I sat listening to it, memories of things ...more

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But, if I dare say it, it wasn't until I had helped kill a man that I realized how elusive and complex an act a murder can actually be, and not necess...more

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But walking through it all was one thing; walking away, unfortunately, has proved to be quite another, and though once I thought I had left that ravin...more

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Out on the lawn, Bunny had just knocked Henry's ball about seventy feet outside the court. There was a ragged burst of laughter; faint, but clear, it ...more

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Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

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The lamplight was eerie, and, standing there motionless in our bathrobes, sleepy, with shadows flickering all around, I felt as though I had woken fro...more

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It was a clear, black morning, encrusted with stars.

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Occasionally a car swooshed by in the rain and its headlights would swing round momentarily and illuminate the room-the pool table, snowshoes on the w...more

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Though Julian could be marvelously kind in difficult circumstances of all sorts, I sometimes got the feeling that he was less pleased by kindness itse...more

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All of a sudden, images from every crime movie I'd ever seen began to pop into my mind—the windowless room, the harsh lights and narrow hallways, imag...more