“Buster closed his eyes, held his breath, and, before he realized that the gun had been fired, a gust of heat and wind passed over him and deconstructed the beer can atop his head, the sound of something irrevocably giving up its shape and becoming, in an instant, something new.”

“Buster sat on the curb in front of the college, waiting for his sister to pick him up. To pass the time, he skimmed the stories of the creative writing students. One was about a wild party and the story consisted almost entirely of a detailed explanation of a drinking game called Flip 'N Chug that seemed, to Buster, to be too complicated to facilitate the simple goal of getting drunk.”

“His writing had become, like a stash of rare and troubling pornography, something that must be kept hidden, an obsession that other people would be mystified to discover.”

“When she called her brother, Buster said that she should climb out the window of the bathroom and run away, which was his solution to most problems.”

“I don't think I can keep looking at this stuff, Buster," she informed him, handing the camera to her brother. "It makes me want to drink either more alcohol or none, and I can't imagine either possibility.”

“It was hard to see where he was going, and he was careful not to damage the camera, so expensive that his father made him name it (Carl), so he would treat it more carefully.”

“He would teach himself to dislike what he actually liked, to approve of what he did not totally understand, in the hopes that he would come out the other side with something that resembled inspiration, something that would make him more famous than Chris Burden or even Hobart Waxman.”