“Music expresses both in lyrics and in tune something of the orientation of the composer and author as to what the truth of religion is and how we ought to practice it”

“I simmer in the half-light of a stoop, raising beers under a pompadour on the first brisk night, pressure more potent than any barometer can read. To see your hand to the tramp of feet is a way to measure strangers. To feel your hair on my finger accidentally is common sense, a way of leading you to me as the watch moves. We return to our bed through the bakery smells of daybreak, sky palling, empty of jets. The schedule is suspended, then resumes like gray dead hands in the east, and I want you never to die.”

“I love vast libraries; yet there is a doubt,If one be better with them or without,Unless he use them wisely, and, indeed,Knows the high art of what and how to read.”

“In the alley where I last saw Justine, there was no sun. The storefronts displayed carnation bouquets and orthopedic shoes and hearing aids, but in the alley, these same stores were just dark walls, and looking at them was like looking at the back of someone who has turned and walked away from you.”

“I don't know why, but whenever I'd look at Amber, all determined and long-legged, I'd imagine her climbing out of a car wreck while the slow, sluggish passengers burned inside.”

“I've read Flowers in the Attic and The Other Side of Midnight and Go Ask Alice and I don't want to read any more books where the girl dies in the end.”

“Call it inevitable, call it the doomed fate of love. Call it karmic, fucked up, the dance of the wolves. Live it, love it, call it life. Call it Led Zeppelin. Yeah, yeah. Really, I don’t really, really don’t fucking care.”