dennis scharnberg

What does she dread, this charming creature?  Being merely a bit part in another’s tale.

Jonathan Steed,  Down Under.

Helen claimed—rather too proudly—that she had never thought in words.

Pryce Cummings,  Rattle Box.

“It’s not a mystery, Beth.  Not at all.  And it is not amazing.  Not.  At.  All.”

Quentin Drabb,  Ebenezer’s Untold Tales.

“It was infant mortality, Mr. Plowman.  I assure you.”

“At age thirty-six?”

“Yes, sir.”

Lana Dowling,  The Mystery of the Dull Parcels.

It’s that the lies are so familiar to them.  They jump into the whole mess as though stepping into a nice pair of boots.

Hill Boothby,  Essays on Disappointment Management.

“And down it all went,” said Elfwick in his softest voice.  “Like a mournful Buster Keaton, wondering what has happened.  All the way down to the pavement.”

Adrian Knowles,  Listen to Me.

We know society—or civilization—as a continuous phenomenon.  We have yet to experience it on a sporadic basis.

Olmstead Trent III,  The History of Objects.

Answers  have  consequences.

Godfrey Tooke,  Collected Aphorisms.

What the conspirator sees is planning (not conspiracy).

Desmond Urquhart,  The Unsocial Sciences.

Paula regards “truth” as a brief noise generated by the larynx.

Otto Klegg,  The Ellipse of Uncertainty.