Looking Out Our Eye Hoals

From Russel Hoban, Riddley Walker. Indiana University Press, 1998—

You know Riddley theres some thing in us it dont have no name…Its some kynd of thing it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals…It aint you nor it dont even know your name. Its in us lorn and loan and sheltering how it can…Its all 1 girt thing bigger nor the worl and lorn and loan and oansome. Temmering it is and feart. It puts on like we put our cloes. Some times we dont fit. Sometimes it cant fynd the arm hoals and it tears us apart…Now Im old I noatis it mor. It dont realy like to put me on no mor. Every morning I can feal how its tiret of me and readying to throw me away. Iwl tel you something Riddley and keap this in memberment. What ever it is we dont come naturel to it.

Tommy, Says I, Spell Cat

From Finley Peter Donne, Mr. Dooley's Philosophy. NY: Harper and Brothers, 1906, p. 246—

"Tommy," says I, "spell cat," I says. "Go to th' divvie," says the cheerub. "Very smartly answer-ed," says Mary Ellen. "Ye shud not ask thim to spell," she says. "They don't larn that till they get to colledge," she says, "an" she says, "sometimes not even thin," she says.

Horror Vacuii

Francois Rabelais—

Nature abhors a vacuum.

Anon—

—Hey, Pop, vot is a vacuum?

—A vacuum is a void.

—I know it's a void, but vot does dat void mean?

Charles Bragg—

Nature abhors a vacuum cleaner salesman.

Tennessee Williams—
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.