“With practice I will eventually realize my goal; in the meantime, come to Paris and you will find me, headphones plugged tight in my external audio meatus, walking the quays and whispering, 'Has anything else been inserted into your anus? Has anything else been inserted into your anus?”

“If nothing else, life in the suburbs promised that you might go from day to day without finding shit in your hair.”

“I looked from face to face, exaggerating flaws and reminding myself that these boys did not like me. The hope was that I might crush any surviving atom attraction, but as has been the case for my entire life, the more someone dislikes me the more attractive he becomes.”

“He has a passport," my classmates would whisper. "Quick, let's run before he judges us!”

“I had to wrestle daily with both my inadequacy and my uncontrollable jealousy. I didn't want to kill her, but hoped someone else might do the job for me.”

“Given enough time, I guess anything can look good. All it has to do is survive.”

“What I really hated, of course, was my mind. There must have been an off switch somewhere, but I was damned if I could find it.”