“The Joker's henchmen break into the museum and empty the display cases; this occurs repeatedly, again and again: finally it can be reckoned upon beforehand and becomes a part of the exhibition. ”

“Tourette's is just one big lifetime of tag, really. The world (or my brain---same thing) appoints me it, again and again. So I tag back. Can it do otherwise? If you've ever been it you know the answer.”

“I want what we all want," said Carl. "To move certain parts of the interior of myself into the exterior world, to see if they can be embraced.”

“My inner chemistry had been hijacked by a mad scientist, who poured the fizzy, volatile contents of my heart from a test tube marked SOBER REALITY into another labeled SUNNY DELUSION, and back again, faster and faster, until the floor of my life was slick with spillage.”

“Those promises we make to ourselves when we are younger, about how we mean to conduct our adult lives, can it be true we break every last one of them? All except for one, I suppose: the promise to judge ourselves by those standards, the promise to remember the child who would be so appalled by compromise, the child who would find jadedness wicked.”

“I’d forgotten my identity as the world’s most pathetic superhero, become a Californian instead. ”

“I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me. ”