“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.”
Gearing Up for the Attempt
“Prosecutor Radavic leaned forward, squeaking his chair with authoritative mien. His long fingers were splayed, hands together, fingertip to fingertip, as though a spider were sideways on a mirror, doing push-ups in an agitated manner. His hair, just a tad longer than it really ought to have been, was slicked back on each side, giving the appearance of an attempted comb-over without actually going for it.”
At Least Three
“The customer was just frustrated with his deteriorating motor skills, but I think the way he smelled had something to do with that—he smelled like living downwind of three Kentucky bourbon plants.”
When Tattoos Talk
“This part of town had their crazy pastors too, but they mainly operated out of storefronts with names like Knee Deep in Glory Gospel Center. And some of their pastors had tattoos, but these were just tattoos that said, ‘I was in the Navy once, before I met Jesus,’ instead of the uptown ecclesiastical version that said, ‘I am desperate to accessorize my iPad.”
You Know, Like That
“‘And I know that if you have not yet done this this, it is not yet necessary.’ At this she bobbed her head perkily like a ponytailed girl in a biscuit commercial from 1957.”
Fine With Me
“And Bill used to play that role just fine. If Bill had been a local potentate centuries before, and his city was under siege, and he had been told by the randy and imperious besieger to ‘Surrender all your gold, and let us ravish all your women,’ Bill would have appeared above the city gates to say something along the lines of ‘Okay!’”
How Could It Not?
“The controversy had gone national when he had achieved the high-water mark of two running jokes on Letterman. Here was a mega-bestselling evangelical author, caught up in a sex scandal. How could he not make it to Letterman? Then somebody took the AP wire, stretched it across the road and waited for Chad to come around the corner on a motorcycle like some nondescript Nazi in pursuit of somebody important in an old WWII movie. That had happened on Thursday.”
A Leaky Elder-Meeting Basement
“His moral authority was apparently stuck, like an oil-soaked T-shirt down in the sump pump, and this made it hard to control the flooding in this elder-meeting basement of his.”
The Blackest of Eyes
“But of course the black eye would make him look that way [sullen] whether he was or not. It was a garish, overdone display, about a quarter of an acre, with deep magenta and black and a few isolated blue stripes. That is what had happened when Pastor John Mitchell had extended the right hand of fellowship forcefully to Chad’s left eye. Pastor Mitchell had laid hands on him in a way quite dissimilar to what had happened to Paul and Barnabas at Antioch, when relations between clergymen had been somewhat more amicable.”
Gunked
“Finally, after repeating several phrases unnecessarily (the sermonic equivalent of blinking fuel gauge), John decided that he had to wrap up. He didn’t feel any better. He felt like he had just tried to give a tar baby a bath in vegetable oil. Lester didn’t look any cleaner, and John just felt gunked.”