“Already, what would become my tribe had begun to die off.”

“I would learn the varying temperature of erratic desire, the caloric output of longing, and the previously undefined and eventually unbearable weight of first love.”

“Snortissimus dorsi.”

“Lee followed, more relaxed to be led into the now familiar beauty of candlelight and the soft music of a banquet in that shrine to the dead.”

“The past was gone. Nothing could change what had already been. Looking back at it, letting its wounds fester, indulging in regret was just a different, slower way to die. The living moved forward.”

“Suits obviously had helped to promote bad government and he was as guilty as anyone for wearing them so steadfastly for twenty years. Of late he had become frightened of the government for the first time in his life, the way the structure of democracy had begun debasing people rather than enlivening them in their mutual concern. The structure was no longer concerned with the purpose for which it was designed, and a small part of the cause, Nordstrom thought, was probably that all politicians and bureaucrats wore suits.”

“My stomach rumbled. Like certain other portions of my anatomy, it had a tendency to become easily sidetracked, and to hell with little details like survival.”