“She quoted a dead playwright and called me a bullet with nothing but a future. She understood my lack of self-pity. She knew why I despised everything that might restrict my forward momentum. She knew that bullets have no conscience. They speed past things and miss their marks as often as they hit them.”

“We burned down rooms. We knew what everything meant. We understood terror and fury as no one else had. It hurt to be together and hurt more to be apart. Our mouths clashed. Our teeth scraped. Our arms ached from the meld. We knew each other's smells and heard each other's voices and told each other things that no one else ever had.”

“It was easy not to think of my future; I didn't have one.”

“Where’s your sketch pad?” I asked.… “I gave that up,” Kay said. “I wasn’t very good, so I changed my major.”“To what?”“To pre-med, then psychology, then English lit, then history.”“I like a woman who knows what she wants.”Kay smiled. “So do I, but I don’t know any.”

“Some men get the world, some men get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona. You're in with the former, but my God I don't envy the blood on your conscience.”

“To me, there's nothing on earth other than women. It's why I get out of bed every morning.”

“There's a kid or some kids somewhere. I'll never know them. They're particle-puzzle-cubing right now. They might be mini-misanthropes from Moosefart, Montana. They might be demi-dystopians from Dogdick, Delaware. They dig my demonic dramas. The metaphysic maims them. They grasp the gravity. They'll duke it out with their demons. They'll serve a surfeit of survival skills. They won't be chronologically crucified.They'll shore up my shit. They'll radically revise it. They'll pass it along.”