Are there not times, Ridley, when you yourself wish only to hear the best in people – and not to be dragged downwards into the underworld we all regularly inhabit?

She lit my soul and inhaled deeplyFlicking my ashes occasionally.

His manhood sways briefly, then comes to a standstill.

Some people call me sick and twisted. I feel that I’m neither; I am instead a Romantic.

Stop flirting,” he tells her, but he looks at her breasts and thinks, The girls with the bruises in the sex films are just dead dolls, but this pretty toy is alive.

Obelmäker is a deeply fearful person and terribly indecisive. Even when he makes a choice, it’s usually bad.

And don’t drop food.

I think to myself: I don’t want to survive this oneI want to burn up in the wreckage

Baumauer secretly fears Kalist – and Kalist knows it.

The visual of Satan isn’t one of a big red devil with horns. Even worse, it’s the picture of something good, twisted enough to be compelling.

He’s in a side room alone with her and it’s far too fucking hot.

An overnight bag with the company logo – a white silhouette of a finch (which once perched on the curved back of a stallion representing cofounder, Orwell, but has now been ‘adjusted’) – sits motionless...

Baumauer has been lured into the exhausting habit of supplying Kalist with ever more exceptional quality work just to appease him and often survives all day and all evening without food, but Maxwell D. Kalist...

Most people tend to think the best of those who are blessed with beauty; we have difficulty imagining that physical perfection can conceal twisted emotions or a damaged mind.

Don’t suffocate in there.

Ego and pride is a two headed twist.

You are a more powerful person than you might have ever imagined.” Maxwell D. Kalist.

You’re a fat cunt and you can’t add up to save your life.” Dimitri Pissec.

Men circle like bees around honey, buzzing to communicate their sexual despair.

Her exceptional beauty also helps her to keep her secrets. Most people tend to think the best of those who are blessed with beauty; we have difficulty imagining that physical perfection can conceal twisted emotions...

‘If life is pain, one could say that killing is an act of compassion. I look forward to my own death, you know. But dying is like losing you virginity. You can only do it...

You need a father figure in your life.

Bah-Bah-black sheep, have you any soul?No sir, by the way, what the hell are morals?

If there’s grass on the pitch,” and gives his small cock a quick squeeze under the desk.

Opposite Pissec sits ghoulish Gottfried Baumauer, a tall, skinny workaholic with dark-ringed eye sockets and long, yellowing smoker’s fingers. He’s thirty-eight. He doesn’t say much. He drinks a lot of tea – likes it strong...

I hate working with sexy women.” Dimitri Pissec.

It’s not dystopia to think history will repeat itself.

The more fucked up you are, the more I like you. As long as you’ve managed to hold onto your identity through all the shit, then it won’t matter how twisted you are. I will...

You’ve never really loved your wife, have you, Ridley?

Pissec approaches Pamela Geiger’s cubicle, itching in rhythm with her. He wants to ask her a question while Kalist is out of earshot. She’s not a grass, he’s sure, but stupid people die first.

Baumauer sits at home in silence in the evenings planning how to impress his rigidly strict father who’s in his late seventies, but who still enforces the same dynamic between himself and his three, guilt-ridden...

A black-haired bitch with man’s hands, widow Liza Van der Bruggenziltch-Finch makes all the important decisions. She is a power-hungry dominatrix. Orwell is her slave. (No one ever sees him.)

The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

…Life had handed me a different set of cards and I was going to have to play my hand either way.

Only men with intelligence, confidence and absolutely no empathy at all can progress upstairs.

The beagles are partying under Geiger’s desk.

As humans, reality for us is largely based on other people’s perceptions. If there’s 20 bodies in your crawl space but you haven’t been caught yet, you tell yourself you’re still a birthday clown, and...

Do I need to fire the little prat yet?” Liza Van der Bruggenziltch-Finch.

It’s just one more thing she hadn’t considered, and as the idea of it settles over her, she realizes again how entwined their lives are. They’re like two trees whose branches have grown together. Even...

It’s late and most of the clerks are at home in their beds, dreaming of swimming in pools filled with real money.

Maxwell D. Kalist is a receiving teller at a city bank, Orwell and Finch, where he runs an efficient department of twenty two clerks and twelve junior clerks. He carries a leather-bound vade mecum everywhere...

Heads swivel. Whispers erupt. As Kalist returns to his desk, bone cane by his side, he indulges, briefly, in horse practice, neighing lightly as he scrolls through a few mental images of busty secretary, Geiger,...

No matter how damaged we were by our lives, we are whole when we are together

Obelmäker is eating at his desk, a habit both Baumauer and Pissec find repulsive.

Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black. She has a knife, knife, knife, stuck in her back, back, back. She cannot breathe, breathe, breathe. She cannot cry, cry, cry. Thats why...

Without pride, man becomes a parasite – and there are already too many parasites.

Each day of the week, Kalist indulges himself in a different, secret ritual. On Mondays, he wears cologne. On Tuesdays, he eats meat for lunch. On Wednesdays, he places a bet after work. On Thursdays,...

Bride of Beimerstetten, bride of Beimerstetten, bride of Beimerstetten, naked bride of Beimerstetten,” and he imagines a procession of proud military men blowing trumpets as they stomp through a bomb-devastated town to the tune of...

…and available man candy. But at least there would be mud, and maybe cows.” p12

I’m warning you because you’re young and vulnerable. He’s a dirty, lying, conniving piece of shit and he’s dangerous.” Gottfried Baumauer.