Her eyes were glistening, but for some reason he couldn't reach out and touch her. It was like some gestures were so simple they were beyond him.

~ Garth Risk Hallberg

Garth Risk Hallberg City On Fire Comfort Crying Garth Risk Hallberg

Famous revolutionary,' you say, and the laughter pumps out of your chest like blood, great almost painful spurts of it splashing up the building faces toward the marquee moon.

~ Garth Risk Hallberg

Garth Risk Hallberg City On Fire Description Garth Risk Hallberg Laughing Laughter Metaphor

There were two options—call the foul or don't—and either way, he would lose, but there was a thrill here in this moment when actual combat might have replaced the shadowboxing he'd been doing for months now with every last person he loved.

~ Garth Risk Hallberg

Garth Risk Hallberg City On Fire Conflict Confrontation Garth Risk Hallberg

He wanted to flee in shame, to the kitchenette, to the next room, to the fire escapes and rooftops and the places where the city ended.

~ Garth Risk Hallberg

Garth Risk Hallberg City City On Fire Flee Garth Risk Hallberg Shame

Even the kids, behind the slice of streetscape floating in the glass, had mastered the art of pretending not to see.

~ Garth Risk Hallberg

Garth Risk Hallberg City On Fire Description Garth Risk Hallberg Kids

He was a priest now, pagan, half-naked in the night, performing obscure rites of interment. Or he was the lead player in his own novel, or in one of those new arcade games William loved, compelled to repeat some totemic motion until he got it right. Only once did he feel, as he had on New Year's Eve, that someone was standing among the trees, watching. Well, let him watch, damn it. Something was being enacted here, as if it had been this deeper mission calling Mercer home all along. And now that he'd completed it, maybe he would be allowed to advance through to the next level, to a world where no one got shot.

~ Garth Risk Hallberg

Garth Risk Hallberg City On Fire Garth Risk Hallberg Metaphor Video Games

Despite which, Charlie seems doomed to stumble around in the dark, clutching pieces of a puzzle he still can't see.

~ Garth Risk Hallberg

Garth Risk Hallberg City On Fire Clueless Doomed Garth Risk Hallberg In The Dark Metaphor

Actual artists are like mythological creatures,' she heard herself opine. 'You hear about them, but a sighting's pretty rare.

~ Garth Risk Hallberg

Garth Risk Hallberg Artists City On Fire Garth Risk Hallberg Rare

All these threads, like the ley-lines he'd read about in his Time-Life history books, converging on the Cicciaro girl, who lay there unaware, a glass-coffined beauty whose kingdom was in ruins.

~ Garth Risk Hallberg

Garth Risk Hallberg City On Fire Converging Fairy Tales Garth Risk Hallberg Interconnectedness Sleeping Beauty Snow White

The second this interminable wait ended, it would all start to fall away into the past, to become unreal.

~ Garth Risk Hallberg

Garth Risk Hallberg City On Fire Garth Risk Hallberg Waiting

Even before the letter he'd been divided: one part of him swanning with Jay Gatsby around an imaginary Gotham; the other part stolid and earthbound, nose to the deep fryer, in the stifling, sizzling South.

~ Garth Risk Hallberg

Garth Risk Hallberg Allusions Batman City On Fire Garth Risk Hallberg Gotham Jay Gatsby New York City The Great Gatsby

You're hung up on something that's never going to love you back.

~ Garth Risk Hallberg

Garth Risk Hallberg City On Fire Garth Risk Hallberg Hung Up On You Unrequited Love

College stirred in her a certain contempt for virtues like kindness and persistence. She would have appeared to have been a kind and persistent person herself, but a steady diet of Antonioni films and an introductory course on existentialism had awakened her to the fact that she wanted more.

~ Garth Risk Hallberg

Garth Risk Hallberg City On Fire College Garth Risk Hallberg Humor

No one, in the end, made it out of this life alive.

~ Garth Risk Hallberg

Garth Risk Hallberg City On Fire Death Garth Risk Hallberg Inescapable Life Mortality Unavoidable