“You didn't want to call your boyfriend Buddy, but when reverting to his real name meant Bruce, it left you with no real ground to stand on.”

“Call me Richard. That’s my real name. Call me that.”

“Everything's a lot tougher when it's for real. That's when you choke. When it's for real.”

“A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.”

“Well then, I'm going to tell you a secret almost every newspaper man and woman who's been at it awhile knows: in real life, the number of actual stories - those with beginnings, middles, and ends - are slim and none. But if you can give your readers just one unknown thing (two at the very outside) and then kick in what Dave Bowie there calls a musta-been, your reader will tell himself a story.”

“Christ.No, not Christ. These leavings were made in propitiation of a much older God than the Christian one. People have called Him different things at different times, but Rachel’s sister gave Him a perfectly good name, I think: Oz the Gweat and Tewwible, God of dead things left in the ground, God of rotting flowers in drainage ditches, God of the Mystery.”

“Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.”