“...and there, in the background, the brite spring sky's sediment had sunk to a dark band of blue. Ah, it mesmerized me...like the snow had done. All the woe of the words, "I am" seemed dissolved there, painlessly, peacefully.Hae-Joo announced, "The Ocean.”

“The silences after his last gasp were sung together by a blackbird. I lay there, my eyes unable to close. His were unable to open. I listed the places where I hurt, and how much. My loins felt ripped. Something inside had torn. There were seven places on my body where he had sunk his fangs into my skin and bitten. He'd dug his nails into my neck, and twisted my head to one side, and clawed my face. I hadn't made a noise. He had made all the noise for both of us. Had it hurt him?”

“So winners, Hae-Joo proposed, are the real losers because they learn nothing? What, then, are losers? Winners?”

“Well, Hae-Joo probed, what did I do to relax? I play Go against my sony, I said."To relax?" he responded, incredulous. "Who wins, you or the sony?"The sony, I answered, or how would I ever improve?So winners, Hae-Joo proposed, are the real losers because they learn nothing? What, then, are losers? Winners?I said, If losers can xploit what their adversaries teach them, yes, losers can become winners in the long term.”

“After my modest victory I played patience (the card game, not the virtue, never that) in the lounge, something I had not done since my ill-starred Tintagel honeymoon with Madame X.”

“But, overall, I concluded the young-hack-versus-corporate-corruption thriller had potential. (The Ghost of Sir Felix Finch whines, "But it's been done a hundred times before!" - as if there could be anything not done a hundred thousand times between Aristophanes and Andrew Void-Webber! As if Art is the What, not the How!)”

“All the seats were taken, and I had to squeeze into a three-inch slot. I lost my balance when the train pulled away, but a human crumple zone buffered my fall. We stayed like that, half fallen. The Diagonal People.”