The silence of the pulpit is the silence we heard when you did not answer cries for help. In the eaves of this place are the festooned remnants of the friends you did not come to assist. In the darkened rooms of rotted staircases are the tattered faces of lovers you betrayed- here your mother, there your father, both gone now and neither with any degree of calm or joy. Here is the sanctuary of your lost chances. There is no pastor, no choir, no stewards, no supplicants. It is a congregation of one. You will worship here all the remaining days of your life and at night your spirit will kneel on broken glass in the pews.
-- Harlan Ellison, "The Silence"
2 comments:
a whole category for Harlan Ellison columns. made my day to read through them (and now that I know that In Time was ripped off from "Repent . . .", I'll have to go see it.
Off topic, but in similar news, I've read that James Cameron says that Terminator was not ripped off from Ellison and seems to imply that the credit in that movie was to settle a nuisance suit. You may be enough like me to have thought that Cameron had ripped it from the Outer Limits (mainly Soldier, with a little Demon) immediately upon seeing the movie.
wow This is The Cathedral where, the building is still standing firmly ......
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