“You're not very good at this, are you?''At what I do, I'm the best. This isn't what I do.”

“He drove. That was what he did. What he’d always do.”

“Why’d you call, boy? What did you want from me?""The company of a friend, I think.""Always a cheap treat.”

“Mostly what you lose with time, in memory, is the specificity of things, their exact sequence. It all runs together, becomes a watery soup. Portmanteau days, imploded years. Like a bad actor, memory always goes for effect, abjuring motivation, consistency, good sense. ”

“Time went by, which is what time does, what it is.”

“That you're Borges.' Manny laughed. 'Of course you are, you dumb shit. That's the whole point.”

“Maybe he should turn around. Go back and tell them that’s what life was, a long series of things that didn’t go down the way you thought they would.Hell with it. Either they’d figure it out or they wouldn’t. Most people never did.”