“In all those stories, I could fly.”

“Hey," Victor said. "Tell me a story."Thomas closed his eyes and told this story: "There were these two Indian boys who wanted to be warriors. But it was too late to be warriors in the old way. All the horses were gone. So the two Indian boys stole a car and drove to the city. They parked the stolen car in front of the police station and then hitchhiked back home to the reservation. When they got back, all their friends cheered and their parents' eyes shone with pride. You were very brave, everybody said to the two Indian boys. Very brave.""Ya-hey," Victor said. "That's a good one. I wish I could be a warrior.”

“Thomas," Chess said, "if you don't want to be famous and have your stories heard, then why'd you start the band up?""I heard voices," Thomas said. "I guess I heard voices. I mean, I'm sort of a liar, enit? I like the attention. I want strangers to love me. I don't even know why. But I want all kids of strangers to love me."The Indian horses screamed.”

“He wanted the songs, the stories, to save everybody.”

“Seymour looked around the Tucson McDonald's. There were white people and Mavajos; there were people who preferred their Quarter Pounders with cheese and those who didn't care for cheese at all; and there were those who desperately wish that McDonald's would introduce onion rings to its menu.”

“We writers are the worst kind of cruel,Because we worship our own stories and poems,And what human can compete with metaphors?Writers stand still and yet vacate our homesInside our fantasies. We are word-whores,With libidos and egos of balsa wood.We’d have sex with our books, if only we could.”

“It was July. Crazy hot and dry. It hadn't rained in, like, sixty days. Drought hot. Scorpion hot. Vultures flying circles in the sky hot.”