“Do you always wear Malaysian imitations of Brooks Brothers blue oxford button-downs, Mr. Laney?" Laney had looked down at his shirt, or tried to."Malaysia?""The stitch-count's dead on, but they still haven't mastered the thread-tension.""Oh.""Never mind. A little prototypic nerd chic could actually lend a certain frisson, around here. You could lose the tie, though. Definitely lose the tie. And keep a collection of felt-tipped pens in your pocket. Unchewed, please. Plus one of those fat flat highlighters, in a really nasty fluorescent shade.""Are you joking?""Probably, Mr. Laney. May I call you Colin?""Yes."She never did call him "Colin," then or ever. "You'll find that humor is essential at Slitscan, Laney. A necessary survival tool. You'll find the type that's most viable here is fairly oblique.""How do you mean, Ms. Torrance?""Kathy. I mean difficult to quote effectively in a memo. Or a court of law.”

“Laney felt the pills he'd taken, the ones that were supposed to cushion the jet lag, drop out from under him like some kind of rotten pharmacological scaffolding.”

“Laney had recently noticed that the only people who had titles that clearly described their jobs had jobs he wouldn't have wanted.”

“Take me home," she said, and the words hit me like a whip. I think I shook my head. "Take me home." There were levels of pain there, and subtlety, and an amazing cruelty. And I knew then that I'd never been hated, ever, as deeply or thoroughly as this wasted little girl hated me now, hated me for the way I'd looked, then looked away, beside Rubin's all-beer refrigerator. So--if that's the word--I did one of those things you do and never find out why, even though something in you knows you could never have done anything else. I took her home.”

“[Slitscan's audience] is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.”

“Payton and Laney watched him go.Laney shook her head. “Unbelievable.”Payton gestured. “See—I told you.”“That man has such a great butt.”“Laney!”“What? I’m conservative, Payton, not blind.”

“Laney, I love you. I've found everything I've ever needed and wanted with you. I'm nothing without you.- Oliver”