“I clutched at the brow. The mice in my interior had now got up an informal dance and were buck-and-winging all over the place like a bunch of Nijinskys.”

“Oh my God!" I shouted, smacking at myself to get it off. The chanting abruptly stopped as I danced about the interior of the circle, beating the chunky dust off me. It only made things worse, and I began coughing on someone's dead grandmother. My eyes watered, and I finally gave up, glaring at them from around my hair, now all over the place. Damn it, I was covered in strawberries and human remains.”

“He patted my shoulder. "What's up with you? All of a sudden, you're bucking the system.""i got drunk and had an epiphany.""Shit, this is serious!" He gasped. "Last time that happened to me, i woke up gay.”

“My dreams have wings. But not soaring eagle wings, more like the wings of a butterfly—colorful and easily ripped off. The last time my dreams got ripped off was when I shopped at Walmart, the place where freedom soars like a caterpillar under the foot of oppression.”

“Go out and ask her into the alley.”Clay looked at Jeremy as if he’d just been told to dance the rumba on a public thoroughfare.I bit back a laugh. “Just walk over to her and point at the alley. Maybe say…I don’t know…something like ‘fifty bucks.’ ” I looked at Jeremy. “Does that sound right? Fifty?”His brows shot up. “Why are you asking me?”“I wasn’t—I just meant, as a general…” I threw up my hands. “How am I supposed to know how much a hooker costs?”

“I've been like everywhere And we went to a bunch of different places and got really stoned Then we wnet to another place and got stones again ANd we met these other stoners and went somewhere else and ate tacos ANd I lost my keys and we couldn't go anywhere, so we just got stoned Then we ran out of weed, but I remembered my keys were in the other pocket, adn we went somewhere to score, and got stoned..."Colman..." "And more people came over, and we found a bog of marshmallows and made s'mores....”