“We lived in the Portland Avenue Stacks, a sprawling hive of discolored tin shoeboxes rusting on the shores of I-40, just west of Oklahoma City’s decaying skyscraper core.”
“I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust”
“Good," said Dr. Rust. "Take Elizabeth up to stack 9 and show her the ropes.""But the ropes are on stack 2.""I meant metaphorically.”
“We’re organisms; we’re conceived, we’re born, we live, we die, and we decay. But as we decay we feed the world of the living: plants and bugs and bacteria.”
“I just expanded my class from 40 to a class of 40 million”
“An ugly, lovely town ... crawling, sprawling ... by the side of a long and splendid curving shore. This sea-town was my world.”