dennis scharnberg

It is the past, not the future, that is predestined.

Olmstead Trent III,  The History of Objects.

The internet will eventually be shown to have been murderous, all along.

Jackson Currothers III,  The View From Cauldron.

118. What possible futures do we want to prevent?

Otis Oswald,  900 Delphic Questions.

“The decedent’s head was hammered, sir.  Repeatedly.  And with method.”

Catriona Ravens,  The Fallacy Murders.

Entirely too much attention is given to what we do.  We need to focus far more on the order in which we do things.  What would be the best order?

Hill Boothby,  The Dazzling Realm of Almost.

“We’re sorry, Miss.  But it’s like I said before—windy night, shrubs scraping at the glass, all kinds of noise.  It’s probably just your imagination.”

Carla Marks,  The Murder Matter.

—But that’s all pure speculation, Inspector.  Surely.

—Well, no.  Actually there is nothing at all pure about it.

Virgil Simms,  The Case of the Frivolous Factotum.

An effect cannot precede its cause.  Can it?  Can it?

Tanner Faust,  A Scrapbook of Impertinent Interrogatives.

Self-hatred is the very way of modern life.  But culture steps in to provide deflection.  Yet this same culture is the cause.

Gilbert Parkening,  How the Moon Doth Sway.

Being deliberately confrontational—in art or in writing—is a form of luxury.

Amanda Willcoxen, ed.,  The Literary and Philosophical Fragments of  Gregory James Sallust.