“The winter light, tinted by the bright colors in the street, plays on the go-board. All these festivities cut me off from the rest of the world. My loneliness is like a bolt of crimson silk stowed in the bottom of a wooden chest.”

“For many of us, the hospital was as much a refuge as it was a prison. Though we were cut off from the world and all the trouble we enjoyed stirring up out there, we were also cut off from the demands and expectations that had driven us crazy. What could be expected of us now that we were stowed away in a loony bin?”

“She sat down on a wooden bench that was bolted to the floor . . . in case some high school hooligan like herself decided to make off with it, she supposed.”

“Niccolo Machiaveli stood apart from the rest of the crowd, arms lightly folded across his chest, careful not to wrinkle his Saile Row- tailored black silk tuxedo. Stone gray eyes swept over the other bidders, analyzing and assessing them.”

“Seen from inside the bar, the avenue, the stores opposite, the street glimpsed going off at right angles, the trapezoid of sky visible above the lower buildings, are altered by the tinted windows into an elsewhere, oddly peaceful, a desert or the interior of the sea. Sometimes when he has fallen asleep face upward in the sun, his dreams have taken on this quality of supernatural bright darkness. ("Novelty")”

“What he brought out was a wooden gag they put in someone's mouth before doing something drastic, like cutting off a leg.”