“An invisible gas clouds his thoughts, exhaust from a bus left with its engine running in the middle of his brain.”

“He has the memory of a convict, the balls of a fireman, and the eyesight of a housebreaker. When there is crime to fight, Landsman tears around Sitka like a man with his pant leg caught on a rocket. It's like there's a film score playing behind him, heavy on the castanets. The problem comes in the hours when he isn't working, when his thoughts start blowing out the open window of his brain like pages from the blotter. Sometimes it takes a heavy paperweight to pin them down.”

“That evening I rode downtown on an unaccountably empty bus, sitting in the last row. At the front I saw a thin cloud of smoke rising around the driver’s head. ‘Hey, bus driver,’ I said. ‘Can I smoke?’ ‘May I,’ said the bus driver. ‘I love you,’ I said.”

“The brake and gas were rigged to suit a man of his stature, and he handled them like Horowitz sailing through a storm of Liszt.”

“[His coat] emitted an odor of bus station so desolate that just standing next to him you could feel your luck changing for the worse.”

“Walter broke off a piece of a smile and tucked it into his left cheek as if reserving it for future use.”

“The little boy had wandered away from his mother, tacking across the grass to the play structure. His mother watched him go, proud, tickled, unaware that every time they toddled away from you, they came back a little different, ten seconds older and nearer to the day when they left you for good. Pearl divers in training, staying under a few seconds longer every time.”