“No matter how awful it is to be sitting in thisTerrible magazine office, and talking to thisCircular-saw-voiced West side girl in a dirt-Stiff Marimekko and lavender glasses, and thisCake-bearded boy in short-rise Levi’s, and hearingThe drip and rasp of their tones on the softeningStone of my brain, and losingThe thread of their circular words, and lookingOut through their faces and soot on the window toWinter in University Place, where a blue-Faced man, made of rags and old newspapers, facesA horrible grill, looking in at the food and the facesIt disappears into, and feeling,Perhaps, for the first time in days, a hunger insteadOf a thirst; where two young girls in peacoats and hairAs long as your arm and snow-sanded sandalsProceed to their hideout, a festering cold-water flatAnimated by roaches, where their lovers, loafing in waitTo warm and be warmed by brainless caresses,Stake out a stateOf suspension; and where a black Cadillac 75Stands by the curb to collect a collector of rents,Its owner, the owner of numberless tenement flats;And swivelling backTo the editorial padOf Chaos, a quarter-old quarterly of the arts,And its brotherly, sisterly staff, told hardly apartIn their listlessly colored sackcloth, their ash-colored skins,Their resisterly sullenness, I suddenly thinkThat no matter how awful it is, it’s better than itWould be to be dead. But who can be sure about that?”

“The witchlight made his skin paler, his eyes more intently blue. They were the color of the water in the North Atlantic, where the ice drifted on its blue-black surface like the snow clinging to the dark glass pane of a window.”

“Cam’s face reddened. “You try faling for nine days through multiple dimensions and trilions of miles, landing on your face, breaking your wings, roling around concussed for who knows how long, wandering the desert for decades looking for any clue as to who or what or where you are—and then talk to me about the old memorizer.”

“Last night we told you that none of the angels remember where we landed when we fell," Daniel said."Yeah, about that... How's it possible?" Shelby said. "You'd think that kind of thing would leave an impression on the old memorizer."Cam's face reddened. "You try falling for nine days through multiple dimensions and trillions of miles, landing on your face, breaking your wings, rolling around concussed for who knows how long, wandering the desert for decades looking for any clue as to who or what or where you are - then talk to me about the old memorizer.”

“Feeling it, trying to understand the suns that shone on it, the rains that fell on it, and the snows that covered it. And to wonder where I was when each thing happened to it in its lonely place, where I was, what I was doing, who I was loving, how I was getting along, where I was. I’d hold it, read it, feel it... and look at my own face in whatever reflection might be left.”

“McGrath smoothed his hair with the flat of his hand. He was silently gazing along the copper colored pathway as though it led to a mystical place where men found answers just lying, uncovered on the warm, soft earth. A place where men knew everything and the blackness of infinity was just a ghost story told to scare children.”