Great opening lines

Pawley watched the rain streak the dirty glass.  He liked the way the droplets started out small at the top, hung there for a moment, raced downward until they met a companion, hung for a shorter time, and then began the long swift plunge to the bottom of the pane, taking everything with them.  Life is like that.  Nobody likes to go down alone.
(from "The Waiting Room" by Charles Runyon, from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine)

(I snatched this from the Rara-Avis e-mail list, from the member Ron Clinton, who probably won't mind. I don't know the publishing year.) 

How can someone write this beautifully?

"He is awake, with no idea what time it maybe, or whether, really, he has slept at all. He sleeps poorly these days. Strange, too, how time's become a blur. At first there's no reason to know the time of day, then days themselves give way, finally years. Till only the change of seasons marks another passage, another decline. To remember, he has to think back to where he lived, what rented room or cheap apartment in Gary, Gretna, Memphis, Seattle."

The first paragraph of James Sallis's A Killer Is Dying, not yet published.