the smallest gewgaw

"Because it isn't enough just to show off one's goods!

"A mercurial subtlety is required to sell. One must choose one's words and ideas carefully, flatter adroitly, chatter about things one neither thinks nor believes in, wax enthusiastic over trifles, score a point with a deprecatory gesture, be acutely interested in things one doesn't give a damn about, be many sided, flexible, and amusing, accept the smallest gewgaw with grace, not lift and eyebrow or take it personally if some gross remark is made, and suffer, suffer patiently—the waste of time, the sour, ill-tempered faces, the rude, annoying, rebuffs—suffer in order to earn a few centavos, because 'that's life.'"

~~ from Mad Toy by Roberto Arlt

the highest form of wealth

"The bills, with their colored pictures, seemed more significant, the nickel-based coins jingled merrily as we juggled them in our hands. It's a fact, the money we acquired through trickery seemed more subtle and rare, the highest form of wealth. It seemed to whisper in our ears words of smiling praise and mischievous provocation. It was not the vile, hateful money that must be earned by hard work, but rather easy money, a silver disc with two gnomes' legs and a dwarf's beard, a clowning, dancing money whose smell carried us, like a good wine, to orgiastic thoughts."

~~ from Mad Toy by Roberto Arlt

tornado warnings and thunderstorms

There were thunderstorms, tornadoes, and flood warnings on the night I finished Roberto Arlt's The Seven Madmen and The Flamethrowers—a novel of the year 1929; even as I had completed this one long journey, I considered what I might read next. 

the hour of your end is nearing

"'Listen to what Ezekial says: "Destruction will come, and they will seek peace and there will be none." And this other: "The time is coming, the day approaching, let not the buyer rejoice or the seller mourn, because his wrath is upon all multitudes." That is also from the prophet Ezekial. You can muck about all you want, but the hour of your end is nearing; I'm telling you this from the heart."

~~ from The Seven Madmen and The Flamethrowers by Roberto Arlt

some kind of weirdo

"I look at him in shock, realizing that I had given myself in marriage to some kind of weirdo."

~~ from The Seven Madmen and The Flamethrowers by Roberto Arlt

Lenin

"Yes . . . but Lenin knew where he was going."

~~ from The Seven Madmen and The Flamethrowers by Roberto Arlt

the happiest creature on earth

"Everything had been denied her as a child. She remembered how one of the fantasies of her childhood was to dream she would be the happiest creature on earth if only she could live in a room with wallpaper."

~~ from The Seven Madmen and The Flamethrowers by Roberto Arlt

affirm my existence

"But still, if tomorrow I throw a bomb or murder Barsut, suddenly I'm everything, the man who exists, the man for whom generations of criminologists have prepared punishments, jails, and theories. I, who am nothing, will start the whole terrible machinery of police, secretaries, reporters, lawyers, prosecutors, jailers, paddywagons, and nobody will see me as a loser; instead, I'll be the antisocial man, the enemy who must be kept apart from society. That's really weird! And yet, only crime can affirm my existence, just as evil is all that affirms the presence of man on earth."

~~ from The Seven Madmen and The Flamethrowers by Roberto Arlt