“If you can call it talking, these clipped whispers, projected through the funnels of our white wings. It’s more like a telegram, a verbal semaphore. Amputated speech.”

“The animals have no need for speech, why talk when you are a word.”

“speech to him was a task, a battle, words mustered behind his beard and issued one at a time, heavy and square like tanks.”

“Blondes are like white mice, you only find them in cages. They wouldn’t last long in nature. They’re too conspicuous.”

“It’s always encouraging to be told that it is intellectually acceptable to read the sorts of things that you like to read anyway.”

“The alcohol smell is on my fingers, cold and remote, piercing like a steel pin going in. It smells like white enamel basins. When I look up at the stars in the nighttime, cold and white and sharp, I think they must smell like that.”

“It has thrown off its disguise as a meal and has revealed itself to me for what it is, a large dead bird. I'm eating a wing. It's the wing of a tame turkey, the stupidest bird in the world, so stupid it can't even fly any more. I am eating lost flight.”