Those who saw him hushed. On Church Street. Liberty. Cortlandt.
West Street. Fulton. Vesey. It was a silence that heard itself,
awful and beautiful. Some thought at first that it must have
been a trick of the light, something to do with the weather,
an accident of shadowfall. Others figured it might be the perfect
city joke—stand around and point upwards, until people
gathered, tilted their heads, nodded, affirmed, until all were
staring upwards at nothing at all, like waiting for the end
of a Lenny Bruce gag. But the longer they watched, the surer
they were. He stood at the very edge of the building, shaped
dark against the gray of the morning. A window washer maybe.
Or a construction worker. Or a jumper.
Up there, at the height of a hundred and ten stories, utterly
still, a dark toy against the cloudy sky.
Let the Great World Spin
Opening lines of novel. |
The man above remained rigid, and yet his mystery was mobile.
He stood beyond the railing of the observation deck of the south
tower–at any moment he might just take off.
Let the Great World Spin
Page 4. |
Corrigan told me once that Christ was quite easy to understand.
He went where He was supposed to go. He stayed where He was
needed. He took little or nothing along, a pair of sandals,
a bit of a shirt, a few odds and ends to stave off the loneliness.
He never rejected the world. If He had rejected it, He would
have been rejecting mystery. He would have been rejecting faith.
Let the Great World Spin
Page 20. |
I'd been in the South Bronx a week. It was so humid, some
nights, we had to shoulder the door closed. Kids on the tenth
floor aimed television sets at the housing cops who patrolled
below. Air mail. The police came in, clubbing. Shots rang out
from the rooftop. On the radio there was a song about the revolution
being ghettoized. Arson on the streets. It was a city with its
fingers in the garbage, a city that ate off dirty dishes. I
had to get out. The plan was to look for a job, get my own little
place, maybe work on a play, or get a job on a paper somewhere.
There were ads in the circulars for bartenders and waiters,
but I didn't want to go that way, all flat hats and micks in
shirtsleeves. I found a gig as a telemarketer, but I needed
a dedicated phone line in Corrigan's apartment, and it was impossible
to get a technician to visit the housing complex: this was not
the America I had expected.
Let the Great World Spin
Page 32. |
Lunch had been made for them at the hold folks' home, but
Corrigan went across the road to the local bodega to buy them
extra potato chips, cigarettes, a cold beer for Albee. A yellow
awning. A bubblegum machine sat triple-chained to the shutters.
A dustbin was overturned at the corner. There had been a garbage
strike earlier that spring and still it wasn't all cleaned up.
Rats ran along the street gutters. Young men in sleeveless tops
stood malevolently in the doorways. They knew Corrigan, it seemed,
and as he disappeared inside he gave them a series of elaborate
handshakes. He spent a long time inside and came out clutching
large brown paper badges. One of the hoodlums back-slapped him,
grabbed his hand, drew him close.
"How d'you do that?" I asked. "How d'you get
them to talk to you?"
"Why wouldn't they?"
"You're not worried? You know, a gun, or something, a switchblade?"
"Why would I be?"
Let the Great World Spin
Page 33. |
It struck me that distant cities are designed precisely so
you can know where you came from.
Let the Great World Spin
Page 59. |
Good days, they come around the oddest corners.
Let the Great World Spin
Page 80. |
Long ago, long ago. The simple things come back to us. They
rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and
twist our hearts a notch backward.
Let the Great World Spin
Page 81. |
The repeated lies become history, but they don't necessarily
become the truth.
Let the Great World Spin
Page 129. |
The thing about love is that we come alive in bodies not our
own.
Let the Great World Spin
Page 275. |
I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.
Let the Great World Spin
Page 303. |
Some people think love is the end of the road, and if you're
lucky enough to find it, you stay there. Other people say it
just becomes a cliff you drive off, but most people who've been
around awhile know it's just a thing that changes day by day,
and depending on how much you fight for it, you get it, or you
hold on to it, or you lose it, but sometimes it's never even
there in the first place.
Let the Great World Spin
Page 304. |
It had never occurred to me before but everything in New York
is built upon another thing, nothing is entirely by itself,
each thing as strange as the last, and connected.
Let the Great World Spin
Page 306. |
Everything falls into the hands of music eventually.
Let the Great World Spin
Page 314. |
The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough.
Let the Great World Spin
Page 349, final page of novel. |
The
ideal Valentine gift! Get our outrageously funny quotes book at -
