“Fred put away the phone, finished off his bourbon, and resumed watching the couple suck on the combined mass of their two tongues. He wasn't as drunk as them. Or as young. Or as stupid. He envied them on every score.”

“He dozed off, into a dreamless oblivion, for what seemed like seconds but was in fact hours, and awoke hungover, the inner surface of his skull pulsing like a single, giant nerve being chewed by some ruminant animal.”

“The only spot of comfort was the lingering impression of her fingertips through the fabric of his shirt, a reminder of the good side of having skin. He cultivated that square-inch patch, tilled and tended it into a full-body embrace.”

“She avoids deep thought like an empty restaurant, not out of stupidity, but a canny resolve to be happy.”

“Children, awkward, isolate, their bodies crammed to bursting with caffein and sugar and pop music and cologne and perfume and hairgel and pimple cream and growth hormone-treated hamburger meat and premature sex drives and costly, fleeting, violent sublimations. It's all part of the conspiracy . . . all of it trying to convince them that they're here to be trained for lives of adventure and glamor and heroism, when in fact they're here only to be trained for more of the same, for lives of plunking in the quarters, paying a premium for the never-ending series of shabby fantasies to come, the whole lifelong laser light show of glamorous degradation and habitual novelty and fun-loving murder and global isolation.”

“That's the problem with relationships," George was saying. "It's a contract. You agree to be some unchanging caricature of yourself. To act the same way all the time. Never to change. It's counter-evolutionary. How can anything new and good come into your life, if you're holding on to something that doesn't exist anymore?”

“With the Internet, we can choose the very communities we want to be a part of.”