“In the eyelid-blue betweenness the wordy sounds of the whiskey-drinkers spilled distantly.”

“My uncle's a big drinker. In fact, he just got a liver transplant. They replaced it with a bottle of whiskey.”

“Writing style can be descriptive without being wordy - and wordy without being descriptive”

“As simple an act as reading or writing a sentence must be surrounded by perceptory nap and weave . . . an itch, a stray memory from childhood, the distant sound of a barking dog, or something left over from the lunch that is found caught between the teeth.”

“Her melodious laughter sounded like the distant tinkling of soft bells and he stored the sound in her temple- his heart.”

“And finallythe glass that contains and spills this stuff continuallywhile the drinker hunches before it, while the bartender gathersup empties, gives back the drinker's own face. Who knows what it looks like;who cares whether or not it was young once, or ever lovely,who gives a shit about some drunk rising to stagger towardthe bathroom, some man or woman or even lostangel who recklessly threw it all over—heaven, the ether,the celestial works—and said, Fuck it, I want to be human?”