“But let us just remember what Mark Twain said about how a lie can get halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on his shoes. The Internet has not changed this or made us smarter. It just moves our ignorance around the world at very high rates of speed.”
With No Shade Available
“Martin Malloy was right about the impact that his story would have. The flag story was already hot, and this took the whole thing up to a high summer afternoon on Mercury’s bright side, that being the side closest to the sun.”
Taking Its Sweet Time
“The remaining twenty minutes crawled by like rapidly cooling magma.”
Clueless
“The next morning, while brushing her perfect white teeth, the truth revealed by her manifest and palpable relief over the whole thing came crashing in on her, and so she sat down and acknowledged to herself what was in fact the case. She was a goner. And he was clueless. High-minded. An office full of thick books. Accreditation visits. Scholarly articles. All of that. Stupid man. Dear stupid, stupid man.”
An Actual Handicap
“For Maria was a beauty. And she had decided some years before that there was quite possibly an inverse relationship between feminine beauty and feminine happiness. When she first came to Choctaw Valley, it had taken her almost a year to make any friends at all. Most of the boys were terrified of her, and those who weren’t scared of her were terrified of what the other girls would do if they even talked to her. And needless to say, the girls were usually pretty sullen around her, although in a sweet southern way. All they ever wanted to do whenever they were with her was go to the restroom to check their makeup.”
Admittedly . . .
“Maria Barancho had been a fixture at Choctaw Valley for some years now, but she was an odd-out sort of fixture. She was a black-haired, brown-eyed Italian in the midst of a bunch of pale Celts who, for some reason, liked to think of themselves as Anglo-Saxons. This is like a German confusing himself with a Frenchman, but the history is admittedly complicated.”
An Acquired Taste
“He was a sturdy young man—a fellow that people usually considered good looking, eventually and somewhat reluctantly, after they had gotten over their first shock. Trevor was an acquired taste.”
The Best Kind of Ruckus
“The day was a beautiful one, and the birds in the surrounding foliage, unaware of the human drama that was gathering down below them on the asphalt, just continued on with their melodious ruckus.”
Real Hearty
“The development officer for Choctaw Valley was usually all grins and spectacles, always ready with a hearty handshake.”
Flags Out Front, p. 8
Just Creepy
“One ACLU attorney named Greenbaum was particularly flummoxed, and spoke quite sharply to his colleagues about it. ‘Urination I understand, and defecation I understand. Setting the damn thing on fire is clearly protected speech. That’s why we come to work in the morning. That’s why we’re here. That’s what freedom means. But subordinated honor? That is just creepy.’”
Flags Out Front, p. 8