Harold Brodkey

Being ill like this combines shock - this time I will die - with a pain and agony that are unfamiliar, that wrench me out of myself. ↗

— Harold Brodkey

#being #combines #die #i #ill

Almost the first thing I did when I became ill was to buy a truly good television set. ↗

— Harold Brodkey

#became #buy #did #first #first thing

But death's acquisitive instincts will win. ↗

— Harold Brodkey

#instincts #will #win

Death and I are head to head in a total collision, pure and mutual distaste. ↗

— Harold Brodkey

#death #distaste #head #i #mutual

God is an immensity, while this disease, this death, which is in me, this small, tightly defined pedestrian event, is merely and perfectly real, without miracle - or instruction. ↗

— Harold Brodkey

#defined #disease #event #god #immensity

I am in an adolescence in reverse, as mysterious as the first, except that this time I feel it as a decay of the odds that I might live for a while, that I can sleep it off. ↗

— Harold Brodkey

#am #decay #except #feel #first

I awake with a not entirely sickened knowledge that I am merely young again and in a funny way at peace, an observer who is aware of time's chariot, aware that some metamorphosis has occurred. ↗

— Harold Brodkey

#am #awake #aware #chariot #entirely

I feel sorry for the man who marries you... because everyone thinks you're sweet and you're not. ↗

— Harold Brodkey

#everyone #feel #i #i feel #man

I have thousands of opinions still - but that is down from millions - and, as always, I know nothing. ↗

— Harold Brodkey

#down #i #know #millions #nothing

I look upon another's insistence on the merits of his or her life - duties, intellect, accomplishment - and see that most of it is nonsense. ↗

— Harold Brodkey

#another #duties #her #his #i