“He had a punch like a bag full of cue balls.”

“When you go to the other place, part of you doesn't come back.'What other place, honey?' He placed his watch on the bedstand.And the part of you that does?' She bit her lip and looked like she was about to punch herself in the face with both fists. 'Shouldn't.”

“It occurred to him that thinking like this could explain why, even after all the jobs he'd pulled, he rarely had much money in his pockets. Sometimes it seemed like he stole money from one place just to give it away somewhere else.”

“Growing up, Joe had adored his brother, Then he'd come to hate him. Now, he mostly didn't think about him. When he did, he had to admit, he missed his laugh.”

“Your father picks you up from prison in a stolen Dodge Neon with an 8-ball in the glove compartment and a hooker named Mandy in the back seat.”

“It had occurred to Sean once - on a bender about ten years before with some buddies, Sean and a bloodstream full of bourbon turning philosophical - that maybe they HAD gotten in that car. All three of them. And what they now thought of as their life was just a dream state. That all three of them were, in reality, still eleven-year-old boys trapped in some cellar, imagining what they'd become if they ever escaped and grew up.”

“I go on the presumption that everyone's full of shit until proven otherwise, and this usually serves me in good stead.”