“Right now all he wanted was to get out of this awful place where reality had worn so thin.”

“At Hartford or New Haven or one of those other places where no one in their right fucking mind would want to live.”

“I think reality is thin, you know, thin as lake ice after a thaw, and we fill our lives with noise and light and motion to hide that thinness from ourselves.”

“OH SHIT! I BELIEVE IN ALL OF THOSE THINGS!" he shouted, and it was true: even at eleven he had observed that things turned out right a ridiculous amount of the time.”

“Even at eleven, he had observed that things turned out right a ridiculous amount of the time.”

“It would perhaps not be amiss to point out that he had always tried to be a good dog. He had tried to do all the things his MAN and his WOMAN, and most of all his BOY, had asked or expected of him. He would have died for them, if that had been required. He had never wanted to kill anybody. He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor.”

“Things were going very fast now. Too fast to suit him. Fantasy and reality had merged.”