“People would call him Professor Fang, which sounded so much like a super villain that he wasn't sure he could go through with it.”

“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.”

“What do you think I'm going to do?" she asked him. "Whatever it is," he answered, "I think you'll be terrified when it happens. Don't let that stop you.”

“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.”

“Children are not guaranteed the luxuries of family, Ms. Wells," he said. "If people are unable to exist within the parameters that have been created for them, they lose any claim to titles like son and daughter.”

“You are very sweet," she told him after a year of dating, as they shared dessert at a restaurant, "but it's like your family trained you to react to the world in a way that was so specific to their art that you don't know how to interact with people in the real world. You act like every conversation is just a buildup to something awful.”