“He looked around the room at all the stuff. But it wasn't just stuff and it wasn't just any girl grenade that had gone off in there. It was Nikki McKinney grenade.”

“It was better to talk, which would be a helluva lot easier if he would just talk back a little. Damn it, it was like pulling a teeth to get him to say anything.Like right now. He'd gone completely silent on her again, leaving the ball in her court, where the ball had been for the last half an hour.”

“He'd kissed her, and she'd been poleaxed, frozen in place, because his mouth had felt like coming home. The taste of him, the smell of him, the sound of his breath-the slow slide of his tongue over and around and down the lenght of hers, it had all said, "Here's your place,girl,here with me.”

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”“No, we don’t.” He liked meeting like this, over her bare ass, a hot-off-the-presses copy of the Rocky Mountain News, and a steaming cup of coffee. It was so perfect, he planned on doing it every day for the rest of his life. He just hadn’t told her yet.”

“Nikki : I think he makes women question their position in life through their association with the dichotomy of his physical power and his whole feminine mystique. That's the part of Travis I'm always trying to capture. The tension. You must have felt it in the studio.She was serious. He could tell by the tone of her voice. And again, unbelievably, she was waiting for an answer.Kid : Uh...no.Nikki : You didn't feel the tension ?Kid : Yeah, there was tension. I just didn't realize it was the dichotomy of Travis' physical powers and his,uh,feminine mystique creating it. I thought it was the paint and the hellish death motif, not to mention the,uh,sheer demonic luridness of the eternity-sucking vortex.”

“It worried him. Like him, she had to be exhausted. She smelled like gasoline; her clothes were torn. She had a small white bandage on her forehead where the EMT had cleaned her cut. Dirt smudged her face, her arms, her legs. He knew she still didn't have any underwear, and for the first time, he felt bad about it. Real bad. He wanted to protect her, make her feel secure, keep her from harm—and all he'd done was lose her underwear and practically get her blown up.”

“Fuck, Dylan said, then thought it, just for the hell of it.”