Gordon Highland

“My role is insignificant. Sure, there’s diaper detail and fire watch and general fawning, but aside from keeping our noses above the poverty line, I’m as useful to the kid as a philosophy degree.”

“Many people talk of the “god-shaped void” in their lives that had been waiting to be filled by faith. Always in born-again hindsight, this is. Of course, in present tense, the void is usually first tested with drug- and carnality-shaped pieces until the person’s jigsawed chi bottoms out and settles for spirituality in the bonus round.”

“Hold the mail, I could swear that was funny. He must draw his powers from the others. A malevolent synergy, like when you multiply negative numbers.”

“Strapped in, this chair conjures sympathetic imagery the eyes could never record. Theater of the mind etched on the skull wall. The collective depression of the universe weighting our thoughts, the search for truths, the need to feel connections with others. Bliss balancing confusion, fear tempered by hope.”

“These things matter. It’s tedious, I know. Any writer worth his weight in pulp would by now have set the hero along a definable journey, or at least created some kind of goal against which to measure his progress as we move forward. I assure you, the foundation has been laid. Characters have been established and the scene is set. Dim the lights and let’s dance. Who says I’m even the hero? Get off my fucking back. I’m no journalist, I’m a musician, for Christ’s sake! Still, the ultimate truth, for our purposes anyway, whether these events are factual or not, is better revealed through the words I choose to describe them. I’d never cheat you of that. I only wish I could see through the back of the page as you make the connections.”

“You remind Cruise that I was the one who begged him to run screaming from that script,” Graham shouts into a speakerphone on his desk in an office just like every office in movies with studio executive scenes. Where a window fills the entire rear wall on a floor so high you could see your house from it if it weren’t obscured by its own weather system. The kind that silhouettes the man in power with a Christ-like halo of sunlight meant to intimidate guests into squinting in what could be mistaken for awe. He waves me inside to sit in a chair that’s at least one strategic foot lower than his own.”

“I’ll keep this part short, because no one truly gives a shit about this kind of stuff, and I’m sure you don’t, either. They want to read about someone with more tragic failings than themselves surviving hell to get the girl in the very end. Anything to make their dull existences tolerable, their literary doses coming four minutes at a time on the crapper one-point-seven times per day. By my calculations, that puts you about one week into this story, far too removed emotionally to possibly understand my actions.”

“Writing what you know" is about as much fun as having an affair with your spouse.”

“Heavenly Father, I promise never again (or for three business days, whichever comes first) to take your blessings for granted if your boundless wisdom can manifest to smite this motherfucker. I don’t know, rain down some sulphur, whisper divine suggestion into his ear, even the old salt pillar trick would suffice. But ... I will take up thy sword and act as the county’s mortal archangel once again if I must. I swear to your oft-alleged earthly son that if this thug doesn’t put the toddler down and stop swinging that oversized plastic bat at us, he’ll spend his weekend removing my well-shined size eleven Florsheim from his PCP-smoking ass at the Ballard Institute for Deadbeat Dad Castration.”

“Celebrations, for me, have always been where celibacy meets masturbation.”

“Reading without suspicion is more dangerous than blogging without authority.”

“Borrowed time and stolen moments are those of which we take the most ownership.”

“He who laughs last should not go out to movie theaters.”

“The definition of success constantly evolves for the truly ambitious.”

“You can't copyright a title, but if anyone tries to steal "Rabbi Sanjeev and the Periwinkle Valise of Intrigue," I'll sue the motherfucking Burberry off their back faster than you can say "Neo-Hassidic espionage.”

“If you save your best song for the encore, you won't get one.”