“As the liquid paper’s fumes quell his brain activity, Jack finds himself staring ather again and what he thinks is this: Wow.”

“His face almost looked the way it did when he was a teenager, when there was the subtle expression of both confidence and mischief in his darkly handsome eyes. When I think of him now, though, I don’t picture his face the way it is. What I see is from a memory, from a moment when he must have been eleven or twelve years old and we were both in our backyard and it was summertime and I was drawing in a coloring book and he was there in the green grass and he didn’t know I was watching him. He was crawling around on all fours; he was practicing being a lion or a tiger or more probably a leopard and he was growling to himself, stalking the shadow of a bird, and he didn’t see me staring at him and I think my mother was there, looking at us from an upstairs window, watching us both and gently smiling, and what I remember most is that all of us were happy then with who we were at that moment; at that moment, all of us were quietly happy.”

“You scan the cheering bleachers for the strange boy’s face: handsome, reserved, with the eye patch, a little dramatic, a little scary. You finally find him sitting there in the middle of the sixth row. He is wearing a dark green army jacket and is staring back at you. He looks sad and beautiful, like a watercolor in a hospital room.”

“What lasts?What lasts?What lasts?What lasts?What lasts?And so he stares for an hour or so at all her notes, at the poorly sketched drawings for an art movement that has now come to an end, and realizes how there are all these moments, moments just like this one, there are all these moments, and how everyone lives their lives in these short, all-too-short moments. There are all these moments and what's so interesting, what makes them beautiful, is the fact that none of them last.”

“Jack: Well, I've never been to New York, but I hear it's for assholes. Odile: It's not.Jack: Well, that's what I heard. Cool people don't live there anymore, They all live here. In Chicago.”

“The more I write, the more I've come to realize that books have a different place in our society than other media. Books are different from television or film because they ask you to finish the project. You have to be actively engaged to read a book. It's more like a blueprint. What it really is, is an opportunity... A book is a place where you're forced to use your imagination. I find it disappointing that you're not being asked to imagine more.”

“I really do. It’s the first time I don’t have to think at work, you know. It’s really simple. Youjust answer the phone and put in people’s orders. It’s pretty laid back. You don’t like it?”“No. I feel like it’s killing my brain.”“Maybe that’s why I like it. I don’t mind not having to think.”