dennis scharnberg

This always:  What is the normal thing to be doing at this instant?

Christopher Jayne, A Critique of Sincerity.

How could there possibly be any unintended consequences?  How?  How?

Charles Pfanning,  Mild Interrogations.

—Are you lost?  At all?  Possibly?

—Shut up.

Philip Cavendish,  Tilly’s Treasury of Colloquial Bits.

Frederick had it.  Oh he had it, all right.  He had that “alienation” that he could not stop dramatizing.

Anselm Bligh,  A Collection of Miniatures.

Secularism unleashes self-expression.  Nineteenth-century Romanticism was not an aberration but an inevitability.

Malcolm Scrivener,  The Reclining of the West.

What he really liked—what he loved—was the lying.  His misbehavior was always mere necessity.  Just what was needed to provide a pretext for the thrilling lies.

Thaddeus Crewes,  The Seven Long Years.

We believe in freedom of expression—that is, we did before we didn’t.  Thus, we never believed.

Chalmers Van Nest,  The Trivial Quadrivium.

Sex with whomever and whenever.  That is now the way.  No more Victorianism.  And, alas, no more culture.

Jonathan Culpp,  Post Means After.

“I would say that it’s beside the point.  But then there is no point, is there?”  And Conan was being abrupt and irritating once more.

Charles Thrushmiller,  The Silk Kimono.

What does Edgarton value?  His deeply regarded desire to feel good.

Trent Bendix,  Grieving for Margaret.