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“Gef’s story, which would have been nonsense even if it had not come from the mouth of a talking mongoose, was that he was born in New Delhi on June 7th, 1852. This meant he was at least eighty when he met the Irvings. On average, mongooses live twenty years, though this is the lifespan of a nonverbal mongoose. No one has yet established the longevity of one given the power of speech, but we may assume it is at least ninety.”

“I know for a fact the first UFOs reported in modern times, just before the crash at Roswell, were boomerang shaped and were reported as 'flying saucers' to describe the motion of their flight, like a saucer skipping over water. Yet immediately after, people saw and photographed saucer-shaped objects. Boomerang-shaped objects were rarely seen. Now people mostly report seeing large triangles instead of discs or boomerangs, because that is what they are told to expect to see.”

“Society tells my students that people like them should aspire to prison the same way I understood I would go to college. They only listen to media that reinforces what they’ve been told all their lives: that they are worthless and that they will die or be incarcerated before they reach twenty-five.”

“He was a fixture of the New Paltz community, an inexplicable light switch in the new apartment that definitely turns something on but you can't quite say what. You flick it whenever you get home and inexplicably feel a sort of relief, promising yourself that you'll figure out the wiring one of these days, but not today. Today, you are a bit too busy and this curious switch isn’t hurting anything by being a mystery.”

“The town had an idyllic quietude, a fishing village that decided that was the best way to stay for a century. The houses were wooden, the exteriors faded to a uniform gray by the salt air. They were not, however, the least bit drab. Bright plants prospered, ivies snaking over the shingles so that the houses seemed less built as grown. The sole exception to this canopy was the church. Set at the foot of a mountain, its door was a staggering red, the stained-glass of the steeple pulsing decadently. When the sun hit it, I could believe the town had fallen under a spell that tithed its color to the church. When Sunday night mass began, this window poured forth a kaleidoscopic radiance rivaling saintly visions.”

“There might have been prettier women in the room but, when she turned those babies on, fluttered her eyelashes, I was hers. It had taken me nearly fifteen years to extinguish their light. Now, when she looks at me, it's a vacuum. I had drained so much from her over the course of our marriage that every glance rips a little bit of my soul away to fill the void I had whittled within her.”