“And then, as if in response to someone throwing a big breaker somewhere. Robert P. Warner slumped, shumped, and fell to the floor. He assumed the demeanor and outlook of a beanbag chair and ceased cooperating with the world.”
Which Sometimes Happens
“Tears ran down her cheeks. Her eye makeup was seriously blurred, and she looked out the twin smudges at the camera. Staring at this very spectacle on the screen, John Mitchell told Cindi, who was standing behind him, that News Babe looked like a sensuous and emotionally worked-up raccoon.”
And Then Sprayed a Little Extra
“So the meeting began with a financial report, which Bill Turner had prepared for them, the bottom line of which looked like somebody had been spraying it with Roundup.”
The Problem with Fat Robins
“She was the kind of woman whose absolute support was freely and completely given, until it gave way like a saturated California hillside. Then it was mostly at the bottom with a car or two underneath. The final event that would cause the hillside to give way might be completely trivial—perhaps a robin landing too heavily—but once the business was underway, well, it was all mostly at the bottom. Chad had clearly and unmistakably lied to her daughter. This was a breach of trust not to be endured. It was clear. It was unambiguous. It was a fat robin. It was clearly time to act.”
Like Dew on the Roses
“What a tangle! Pastoral snarls are like the mercies of God—they are new every morning.”
Helps Them Keep Well
“Robert walked out of the 7-Eleven with an order of cheese pump nachos, a hot dog, and a couple of packets of those chocolate thingies with a half-life of seventy-five years”
In Big Letters on the Heel
“Because the lead attorney in that firm—Joe Shattuck, Esq.—spoke with a thick Mississippi accent, this always put urban sophisticates off their guard. Shattuck had made a lot of money that way . . . Not that they knew it at the time, but Shattuck had pulled all their shirts up over their heads and rolled all their socks down, creating a little black wool bead around the tops of their expensive Italian shoes. Shattuck, for his part, during a weekly lunch with his partners at a local catfish emporium, was fairly expressive in how he explained what had happened: ‘Those boys couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.’”
What They Call Good Television
“With that, Radavic swiveled his head and looked straight at Rourke with what he thought was a steely, gray-eyed gaze, like in those TV legal-office drama shows, at an especially tense moment when one of the handsome actors rivets another handsome actor with an unshakeable and hardened resolve and says, ‘Dammit, Trevor, this is our job!’”
Some Have Two
“‘Those there that do have brains—and of those there are more than a few—are running a game that would make a cardinal’s mistress envious’
Bradford raised one eyebrow slightly. Cardinals had mistresses?”
But Obvious When You Think About It
“A certain kind of life always goes back to high school, a fact often overlooked by otherwise insightful biographers. Grown-up life is just a continuation of high school, a fact overlooked by everyone else.”