“I didn't understand how. But the toilets had responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing...”

“I'd made water shoot out of the bathroom fixtures. I didn't understand how. But the toilets responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing.”

“To the extent that I had come to understand that despair does not necessarily result in annihilation, that one can go on as usual in spite of it, I had become hardened. Was this what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities? I didn't like it, but it made it easier to go on.”

“What was life asking of me? How could I respond when I didn't know the question?”

“She takes after her father.""Uh, I guess," I said, unsure how to respond. Bud's reputation was too far down the toilet for it to be a compliment.”

“I had a Chinese girlfriend once who asked me how much she meant to me. I knew very little Chinese, so I responded, "Chicken Lo Mein.”