“The most beautiful faces have some ugly in them.”

“[T]he anti-vitriol vitriol is getting ugly.”

“What was more humiliating, I wondered: having to beg for someone's cold chicken bones or being offered them?”

“I sensed that almost all of them knew they didn't have much more time on earth. Maybe this accounted for their willingness to pitch in with strangers and form a neighborhood.”

“His thoughts were clearly still shoving him further away, toward some ultimate dark drama that he might or might not have actually lived through but whose telling would let out the pressure inside his skull.”

“We're a telephone family, strung out along the wires, sharing our news in loops and daisy chains. We don't meet face-to-face much, and when we do there's a dematerialized feeling, as though only half of our molecules are present.”

“Reliving his degradation had struck some spark in him and it was glowing now like a blown-on coal.”