Leonard Michaels

“I read assiduously. I kept in touch with my species.”

“Answers I began two hundred hours of continuous reading in the twelve hours that remained before examinations. Melvin Bloom my roommate flipped the pages of his textbook in a sweet continuous trance. Reviewing the term's work was his pleasure. He went to sleep early. While he slept I bent into the night reading eating Benzedrine smoking cigarettes. Shrieking dwarfs charged across my notes. Crabs asked me questions. Melvin flipped a page blinked flipped another. He effected the same flipping and blinking with no textbook during examinations. For every question answers marched down his optical nerve neck arm and out onto his paper where they stopped in impeccable parade. I'd look at my paper oily scratched by ratlike misery and I'd think of Melvin Bloom. I would think Oh God what is going to happen to me.”

“In 1982, Raphael Nachman, visiting lecturer in mathematics at the university in Cracow, declined the tour of Auschwitz, where his grandparents had died, and asked instead to visit the ghetto where they had lived.”

“Of mystery there is no end. Of clarity, there is precious little.”

“Looking at a cat, like looking at clouds or stars or the ocean, makes it difficult to believe there is nothing miraculous in this world.”

“There is always something for which there is no accounting. Take, for example, the whole world.”

“March 6, 1961I remembered a party in a house outside of Ann Arbor. There was a jazz band -- piano, bass, drums, and sax -- playing in one of the large rooms. A heavy odor of marijuana hung in the air. The host appeared now and then looking pleased, as if he liked seeing strangers in every room, the party out of his control. It wasn't wild, but with a constant flow of people, who knows what they're doing. It became late and I was a little drunk, wandering from one part of the house to another. I entered a long hall and was surprised by the silence, as if I had entered another house. A girl at the other end of the hall was walking toward me. I saw large blue eyes and very black hair. She was about average height, doll-like features delicate as cut glass, extremely pretty, maybe the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. When she came up to me I took her in my arms and kissed her. She let it happen. We were like creatures in a dream. Holding her hand, I drew her with me and we passed through rooms where people stood about, and then left the house. As we drove away, she said her name was Margo. She was a freshman at the university, from a town in northern Michigan. I took her home. It was obvious she'd never gone home with a man. She didn't seem fearful, only uncertain, the question in her eyes: "What happens next?" What happened next was nothing much. We fell asleep in our clothes. I wasn't the one to make her no different from everyone.”

“Something EvilI said, "Ikstein stands outside the door for a long time before he knocks. Did you suspect that? Did you suspect that he stands there listening to what we say before he knocks?" She said, "Did you know you're crazy?" I said, "I'm not crazy. The expression on his face, when I open the door, is giddy and squirmy. As if he'd been doing something evil, like listening outside our door before he knocked." She said, "That's Ikstein's expression. Why do you invite him here? Leave the door open. He won't be able to listen to us. You won't make yourself crazy imagining it." I said, "Brilliant, but he isn't due for an hour and I won't sit here with the door open." She said, "I hate to listen to you talk this way. I won't be involved in your lunatic friendships." She opened the door. Ikstein stood there, giddy and squirmy.”

“Never to have to think of yourself as white is a luxory that makes you deeply stupid.”