“Maybe he didn't want that life after all, starting over broke, hailing a cab in a busy intersection filled with jockeying junior executives, arms aloft, bodies smartly spinning to cover every compass point. What did he want that was not posthumous? He stared into space. He understood what was missing, the predatory impulse, the sense of large excitation that drove him through his days, the sheer and reeling need to be.”

“He walked among the bookstore shelves, hearing Muzak in the air. There were rows of handsome covers, prosperous and assured. He felt a fine excitement, hefting a new book, fitting hand over sleek spine, seeing lines of type jitter past his thumb as he let the pages fall. He was a young man, shrewd in his fervors, who knew there were books he wanted to read and others he absolutely had to own, the ones that gesture in special ways, that have a rareness or daring, a charge of heat that stains the air around them.”

“He liked the fact that the cars were indistinguishable from each other. He wanted such a car because he thought it was a platonic replica, weightless for all its size, less an object than an idea. But he knew this wasn't true. This was something he said for effect and he didn't believe it for an instant. He believed it for an instant but only just. He wanted the car because it was not only oversized but aggressively and contemptuously so, metastasizingly so, a tremendous mutant thing that stood astride every argument against it.”

“she knows what he means, that they don’t have to touch. the same thing that’s happening to him is happening to her. she doesn’t need to crawl under the table ans suck his dick. too tire to interest either one of them. the flow is strong between them. the emotional tone. let it express itself. he sees her in her wallow and feel his pelvic muscles begin to quiver. he say, tell me to stop and i’ll stop. but he doesn’t wait for her to reply. there isn’t time. the tails of his sperm cells are lashing already. she is his sweetheart and lover and slut undying. he doesn’t have to do the unspeakable thing he wants to do. he only has to speak it. because they’re beyond every model of established behavior. he only wants to say the words.” _Eric Packer”

“It was important for him to believe that he'd spent his life among people who kept missing the point.”

“The instant he knew he loved her, she slipped down his body and out of his arms. Then she wedged herself through the narrow opening in the boards and he watched her cross the street. Nothing moved out there. She was the lone stroke of motion, crew and extras gone, equipment gone, and she was cool and silvery slim and walking head-high, with technical precision, toward the last trailer in the service station, where she would find her clothes, dress quickly and disappear.”

“Is there a fungus that speaks to you? I'm serious. People hear things. They hear God."He meant it. He was serious. He wanted to mean it, to hear anything the man might say, the wholeshapeless narrative of his unraveling.”