“Malcolm chuckled wickedly. "You, my American friend, are like a hidden landmine of sex appeal. I'm going to have to look out for you.""Too late." Owen raised his face to the unfamiliar smells, breezes, sounds of the city, enjoying them even more now that he knew something of it and it had become personal to him. "I've already exploded. You're caught."He tilted his head back and laughed, inviting Malcolm to share the joke, but Malcolm was unusually quiet.....”

“That’s where they’d gone right after the train station, where Malcolm (Malcolm!) had poured his bloody heart out and begged Owen not to leave. Bed. There would be time to hammer out the details later”

“He tasted like gingermint and chocolate kulfi and something stronger and more powerful, something like want and need, and Owen drank him in and gave him back, dying for him in the subjective three hours it took to get to Malcolm's door.”

“The dream was ennobling but doomed. It was Malcolm's curse to see this before the most of the rest of us; it was the beginning of his sainthood that when black Americans reached that point--when they arrived, that is to say, at their blackness--Malcolm was already there.”

“I must have bitten Angus Young too, because his brother Malcolm walked up to me in a rage. I was wearing platform boots, and Malcolm's face was eye level with my belly button. "You fucking bastard," he roared at my navel. "You can bite my brother, fine! But if you fucking bite me, I'll bite your fucking nose off, you dog-faced faggot."I think I said something like "you and what stepladder," because before I knew it, he was attacking me, climbing up my leg and clawing at my face like a crazed cat.”

“Standing in the beam of refrigerator light, Malcolm squirted ketchup into his mouth."He's . . . visiting," I said.Vincent narrowed his eyes and his voice took on a fatherly tone. "Why's he here at midnight?" Malcolm licked the inside of a mustard lid, then said, "I'm here at midnight because I'm fulfilling Katrina's desire.”