“The top of el Raton’s head lay forgotten in the gutter across the street.”

“To the delight of the poetic little gutter boys in the little grey streets.”

“Every time I leave the apartment, I mistake the tree stump across the street for two people kissing/holding each other. I’ve forgotten every time that it’s a tree stump. I’m disappointed every time it’s a tree stump.”

“…like the horse in the old ballads, which Romanticism found in the medieval castle and left in the streets of our own century. The Romanticists rode the poor best until he was so nearly dead that he finally lay down in the gutter, where the realists found him, his flesh eaten away by sores and worms, and, out of pity, carried him away to their books.”

“The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'SAVE US!'...and I'll look down and whisper 'No.”

“He slipped the baldric over his head, laying the leather across his shoulder and the scabbard at his hip. Knowing the weapon a little more intimately, now, he had a new respect for it.”