“Creff was visibly agitated by the stranger's appearance at our door. Memory calls to mind the anxious wringing of his hands, resembling two furless pink badgers wrestling for each other's throats...”

“There are people who wring their hands and call it an abyss, but do nothing to fill it; there are also those who work to widen it, as if the scientist and literary man belong to two different human subspecies, reciprocally incomprehensible, fated to ignore each other and not apt to engage in cross-fertilization.”

“Each man's destiny is personal only insofar as it may happen to resemble what is already in his memory.”

“A choir of pink-cheeked boys lift their voices as a priest seems to pull the music from their throats with the urging of his hands.”

“After all we'd been through, we still couldn't take our heads from out of our asses or our hands from around each other's throats.”

“The moment we stepped out into the hall, Cam's apartment door flung open. Ollie appeared, a cellphone in one hand and Raphael wiggling in the other. "Smile!" he shouted as he snapped a picture on his phone. "It's like my two kids are going to prom.”