Joyce phoned him at the office. Before she could get a word out, he said, “If you ask me, almost all of Doug’s problems can be traced to that bloody school.”

In the Manichaean future, well-vaccinated against privacy and factions, there will be two countries. For purposes of recognition we must name them: one will be called Houston, the other Peking.

It was a glimpse of an adult world so alien to me; what could I think?

And though Logic, little dictator, indicated otherwise, she now knew when and whom she would marry. 

She would remember everything, out of the blue and in full detail. She would see the jade ring wrapped around her ring finger and, immediately, she would see the other jade ring. 

I had one friend named Connie Bronson who lived two houses up the street from me and was one year younger than I and two grades behind because she had had brain fever.

His doorbell rang and Buddy peered through the viewer at a woman in the courtyard. She had green eyes and straight black hair, cut sharply like a fifties Keely Smith. He knew her. She did bookkeeping

ACH THE LAST TO BE FIRST AND VICE VERSA: one beat more, one less,.., the ticking (more or less regular but uneven metronomic sequences) rebounds on the pain at different pitches.

while expecting my gash, declaring
tnat this _f^curious _M^distress
was after me, and having to face the question (to her

It must have burned him up to hear Waldy brag to the girl who kicked his tooth out.