The oblique drops of rain slid down the blades of grass in the park, but it would have made no difference if they had slid up. Then the oblique (drops) turned round (drops), swallowed up by the earth underpinning the grass, and the grass and the earth seemed to talk, no, not talk, argue, their incomprehensible words like crystallized spiderwebs or the briefest crystallized vomiting, a barely audible rustling, as if instead of drinking tea that afternoon, Norton had drunk a steaming cup of peyote.
– Roberto Bolaño, 2666, tans. Natasha Wimmer, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2008, p. 9
Over dinner, Norton explained the parts of the play he hadn’t understood. Only then did Morini realize it had been worse than he’d thought. The acting, however, rose greatly in his esteem, and back at the hotel, as he partially undressed without getting out of the wheelchair, in front of the silent television where he and the room were mirrored like ghostly figures in a performance that prudence and fear would keep anyone from staging, he concluded that the play hadn’t been so bad after all, it had been good, he had laughed, the actors were good, the seats comfortable, the price of the tickets not too high.
– Ibid., p. 96
