“It had acquired a name, Spatters, that reflected the desultory randomness of its outlines: the whole stinking shanty-town seemed to have dribbled like shit from the sky.”

“Perhaps the window is not a sun but an asterisk, interrupting the grammar of the sky, with me sitting below it like a footnote.”

“He had since forever been working on a book called Uncanny Blossom. When Leon had told him, Billy had said, “I had no idea you were entering the Shit Title Olympics.” “If you didn’t swim in your sump of ignorance you’d know that title’s designed to fuck with the French. Neither word’s translatable into their ridiculous language.”

“...and Lublamai no longer thought of screaming but only of watching as those dark markings rolled and boiled in perfect symetry across the wings like clouds in a night sky above, in water below.”

“Its surface sheened with saft that evaporated out from its crystal shielding in threads that degraded to nothing.”

“The moon made horns, the sky was gnarly. The cults were skittish.”

“When he had first started at the center, he had liked to think that he was unexpectedly cool-looking for such a job. Now he knew that he surprised no one, that no one expected scientists to look like scientists anymore.”