“There are too many people on horseback today trying to prove themselves, trying to prepare, trying to get faster. They haven't discovered yet that it's not the fastest who make it to race day.You only have to be the fastest of those who are left.”

“Tell me what it's like. The race.""What it's like is a battle. A mess of horses and men and blood. The fastest and strongest of what is left from two weeks of preparation on the sand. It's the surf in your face, the deadly magic of November on your skin, the Scorpio drums in the place of your heartbeat. It's speed, if you're lucky. It's life and it's death or it's both, and there's nothing like it.”

“Gabe crouches over the radio, trying to get it to pick up one of the mainland music stations, which only works when the weather is just right and the appropriate slain sacrifices have been made.”

“Don't give me that look. I'm not trying to find out who you are. I don't care who you are. I just want to know why it is you are the way you are.”

“Everything mattered and nothing did, and I was tired of trying to find out how both of those things were true. I was an itch that I'd scratched so hard I was bleeding. I had set out to do the impossible, whatever the impossible might be, only to find out that it was living with myself. Suicide became an expiration date, the day after which I no longer had to try.”

“My friend is having his period," I told the pizza guy, and handed him his tip. "He needs Britney and extra cheese to get him through it. I'm trying to be supportive.”

“I'm just not a good psychic. I can tell when something's not right, sometimes, but I can't tell what it is, or when it is, or if I'm supposed to do anything about it. I've tried to make it make sense, but I can't. It's just feelings instead of words.”