“He pulls the gun away from his head and sets it on the coffee table. He wonders who first called it a coffee table. He gets to his feet and walks into the hallway. He wonders who first called it a highway. He wonder who first named anything. How did someone look at a dog and decide what to call it? It’s all so random. Everything is so goddamn random.”

“For the first time in his life he understood why the Bible called sex "knowing". Everything was different. Now he knew Dante. He'd known Dante. And wonder of wonders, Dante had known him right back.”

“Everything is made to perish; the wonder of anything at all is that it has not already done so. No, he thought. The wonder of anything is that it was made in the first place. What persists beyond this cataclysm of making and unmaking?”

“What did I do? Who did I please to get this lucky?" He pulls his lips from my neck and stares at me with wonder. "Are you for real?”

“He was in awe of the thirst that people had for someone to tell them that everything was going to be all right. He marveled at the gullibility and vulnerability of his fellow humans. No wonder the churches called them sheep. They were woolly-headed pack animals being herded around for the benefit of whoever knew how to control the dogs.”

“Who in their right mind wonders how a cat takes his coffee?”