“Any assault on the borders of perception is going to seem rash at first.”

“It's how the news becomes so powerful it doesn't need TV or newspapers. It exists in people's perceptions. It's something they invent, strong enough to seem real. It's the news without the media.”

“How I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature.”

“Isn't death the boundary we need? Doesn't it give a precious texture to life, a sense of definition? You have to ask yourself whether anything you do in this life would have beauty and meaning without the knowledge you carry of a final line, a border or limit.”

“What we are reluctant to touch often seems the very fabric of our salvation.”

“He was a regulator first-class, which was another term for metalworker unskilled.”

“We seem to believe it is possible to ward off death by following rules of good grooming.”