“...I have come to be convinced that it is only the unbending observance of custom that sustains life in an urban circumstance.”

“He came to chat with me the day of my being discharged, advising that I not stay at the dog fight until the last dog was dead. I was a kid and made little counsel. Now that I am a bigger kid, I see the value--belatedly--added. Yet I also see the loss of life in the protecting, first of all, of oneself. Better to give oneself away. Dead f*ck the dog and so on.”

“Don't have stories; have sentences.”

“It’s not what happens to people on the page; it’s about what happens to a reader in his heart and mind.”

“There were no windows in my bedroom, so I had to sit up and read my clock to figure out how angry I should be at my visitor. Eight A.M. I hated whoever woke me up. Had they come an hour earlier, I would have also hated their families and any household pets.”

“Hey, you called me Sam. My actual name. Not Master or dumbass—” “I have never in my life called anyone dumbass.” “Are you sure?” “Yes. Now, focus.”

“When you break up with someone, and I’m not talking casual breakups here, it’s hard to take the sudden absence of such an important person in your life. It reminded me of when I’d stopped going to school and the weird uneasy feeling I’d gotten afterward, like I was forgetting to do something. My life until that point had pivoted around some form of education, and all of a sudden, it was gone. Homework, classes, running around, and then – bam – nothing but a life of work stretching out before you. No one prepares you for that feeling or even mentions it. You just suddenly have a gap and have to decide how to fill it. A break up is like that gap, only much, much more painful. One day the person you talked to constantly or did stuff with is just absent. Gone. Poof. And even though I’m not one of those people who has to be in a relationship all the time, I was feeling at a loss.”