“If you save your best song for the encore, you won't get one.”

“I’ll keep this part short, because no one truly gives a shit about this kind of stuff, and I’m sure you don’t, either. They want to read about someone with more tragic failings than themselves surviving hell to get the girl in the very end. Anything to make their dull existences tolerable, their literary doses coming four minutes at a time on the crapper one-point-seven times per day. By my calculations, that puts you about one week into this story, far too removed emotionally to possibly understand my actions.”

“Writing what you know" is about as much fun as having an affair with your spouse.”

“You remind Cruise that I was the one who begged him to run screaming from that script,” Graham shouts into a speakerphone on his desk in an office just like every office in movies with studio executive scenes. Where a window fills the entire rear wall on a floor so high you could see your house from it if it weren’t obscured by its own weather system. The kind that silhouettes the man in power with a Christ-like halo of sunlight meant to intimidate guests into squinting in what could be mistaken for awe. He waves me inside to sit in a chair that’s at least one strategic foot lower than his own.”

“These things matter. It’s tedious, I know. Any writer worth his weight in pulp would by now have set the hero along a definable journey, or at least created some kind of goal against which to measure his progress as we move forward. I assure you, the foundation has been laid. Characters have been established and the scene is set. Dim the lights and let’s dance. Who says I’m even the hero? Get off my fucking back. I’m no journalist, I’m a musician, for Christ’s sake! Still, the ultimate truth, for our purposes anyway, whether these events are factual or not, is better revealed through the words I choose to describe them. I’d never cheat you of that. I only wish I could see through the back of the page as you make the connections.”

“You can't copyright a title, but if anyone tries to steal "Rabbi Sanjeev and the Periwinkle Valise of Intrigue," I'll sue the motherfucking Burberry off their back faster than you can say "Neo-Hassidic espionage.”

“Hold the mail, I could swear that was funny. He must draw his powers from the others. A malevolent synergy, like when you multiply negative numbers.”