“He shook his head, absorbed in one of his feats of memory, those brief periods of scholastic rapture where he lost touch with the world around him, absorbed completely in conjuring up knowledge from all its sources.”

“He knew the world and its absurdities as only an intelligent Irishman can; which is to say that where his knowledge or memory failed him, his imagination was always ready to fill the gap.”

“Nick shook his head and found to his surprise that he did have tears left after all. He wasn't surprised by a talking cat. The world was crumbling around him and anything could happen.”

“And if Amsterdam was hell, and if hell was a memory, then he realized that perhaps there was some purpose to his being lost. Cut off from everything that was familiar to him, unable to discover even a single point of reference, he saw that his steps, by taking him nowhere, were taking him him nowhere but into himself. He was wandering inside himself, and he was lost. Far from troubling him, this state of being lost because a source of happiness, of exhilaration. He breathed it into his very bones. As if on the brink of some previously hidden knowledge, he breathed it into his very bones and said to himself, almost triumphantly: I am lost.”

“There was silence. No one looked at me. People pretended to be absorbed in their phones. One writer didn’t even have a phone, so he just pretended to be absorbed in his hand.”

“Absorbing the rest of her shadow into his, he knuckled the wall on either side of her head, trapping her in the cage of his arms, but not touching. The cool, sweaty bricks ground into his skin. She shivered and flattened her hands as if clinging to the wall for protection. Fire flared low in his gut, spurring him on.”