dennis scharnberg

Not that God is a trickster, but that we are delusional.

John James Jasper,  Essays on the Mulberry Bush.

—His killer could be a woman.

—Yes.  But, surely, anyone’s killer could be a woman.

Grace Philippi,  The Bliss City Murders.

Daniel found that he could not say the phrase “publishing house” without laughing.

Rubina Malcolm,  The Black Box.

Gibbon wrote of  “…the ease with which intellect and will can be unhorsed and disarmed.”  But what intellect?  What will?

Enos Slaughter, Speaking Out of the Ground.

“I’d like to pet a grizzly bear one day.  Right on the head.  A dead bear, of course.”  Can you find three things wrong with that statement?

Charles Pfanning,  Mild Interrogations.

Any civilization will entail some measure of dishonesty, even in a systematic form.  But, today, we bathe in dishonesty.

Tuc d’Audubert,  Into the Swirling World.

All voices are crazy.  Voice itself is crazy.

Hecuba Gathers,  A Purely Physical World.

—People write books.  Surely.  They do not drop out of the sky.

—No.  You’re wrong.  It’s the sky.

Charles Jeffrey Yett,  Writing in Miniature—Vol. Three.

The value of the individual work lies in its being [another] “model” for modernism.  “Modernism is this,” it proclaims.  The work has no intrinsic value.

Clinton Arbogast,  The Saints of Painting.

Act first, then make up stories to provide reasons for your actions.

Cooper W. Barthelme,  A Systems Approach to Advice.