“He has his chin on his chest and his eyes down. He is thinking of his new baby, his new novel, tomorrow's dance contest. He is thinking of everything except what he is thinking about. ”

“And he thinks that if his soul had a form, this is what it would be. A baby sleeping in his arms.”

“I wonder what my baby is thinking at this moment," he called, rubbing his stomach with his hands. What I was thinking about was whether or not his being my mother was going to wreck my nightly friction ritual.”

“We were not meant for this. We were meant to live and love and play and work and even hate more simply and directly. It is only through outrageous violence that we come to see this absurdity as normal, or to not see it at all. Each new child has his eyes torn out so he will not see, his ears removed so he will not hear, his tongue ripped out so he will not speak, his mind juiced so he will not think, and his nerves scraped so he will not feel. Then he is released into a world broken in two: others, like himself, and those to be used. He will never realize that he still has all of his senses, if only he will use them. If you mention to him that he still has ears, he will not hear you. If he hears, he will not think. Perhaps most dangerously of all, if he thinks he will not feel. And so on, again.”

“Didn’t he have to admit, begrudgingly, that in some extra-perverse corner of his brain the idea of having to be out of town before sundown appealed to him? New Orleans had been the only constant thing in his life. But didn’t he yet an itchy foot sometimes, didn’t he sometimes think about just throwing all his stuff in his car and going?Of course he did. Everybody did, even normal people, the ones with triple mortgages and orthodontists’ bills and responsibilities to everything except what they really wanted.”

“He did not recognize himself either. He was a totally new being, bald, covered with grease and blood, pink and blue eyed: he was his own baby...He was a great fat chuckling baby, and he shat and peed in his filthy trousers and kept driving.”