From a Buick 8

It's funny how close the past is, sometimes. Sometimes it seems as if you could almost reach out and touch it. Only who really wants to?

You don't always talk with your mouth. Sometimes what you say with your mouth hardly matters at all. You have to signify

I thought of telling him I didn't know about reasons, only about chains—how they form themselves, link by link, out of nothing; how they knit themselves into the world. Sometimes you can grab a chain and use it to pull yourself out of a dark place. Mostly, though, I think you get wrapped up in them. Just caught, if you're lucky. Fucking strangled, if you're not.

Law enforcement: a case of good men doing bad chores.

Tonight, however, the impossible was selling cheap.

But people have a really amazing capacity to get used to stuff, even stuff they don’t understand. A comet shows up in the sky and half the world goes around bawling about the Last Days and the Four Horsemen, but let the comet stay there six months and no one even notices. It’s a big ho-hum.

I went into the can and shut the door before he had a chance to reply. And the next fifteen seconds or so were pure relief. Like beer, iced tea is something can can't buy, only rent.

Take the dog with you,” I said.

The imitation lives we see on TV and in the movies whisper the idea that human existence consists of revelations and abrupt changes of heart; by the time we’ve reached full adulthood, I think, this is an idea we have on some level come to accept. Such things may happen from time to time, but I think that for the most part it’s a lie. Life’s changes come slowly…the whole idea of curious cats attaining satisfaction seemed slightly absurd. The world rarely finishes its conversations.

All of us look younger and sweeter when we smile our real smiles, the ones that come when we're genuinely happy.

Bosh." It was Curtis's favorite word in 1983. Sandy hated it. He thought it was a snotty word.

Passion is the hardest taskmaster.

Those two guys distrusted scientists. You know what Tony called them? Death’s cropdusters.

Tony say on more than one occasion that when it came to the PSP (or any law enforcement agency worth its salt), one could best assess a man’s worth by the truthful answer to a single question: How are things at home?

What did he say then?” “What any man says when things are all right at home,” I told him. “He said he was a lucky man.

The coach has a little boy, must be about three. And one day last week when I went overtown to pick Ned up, I saw him down on one knee, playing toss with that little boy in left field. And I fell in love with my kid all over again, Sandy. As strong as when I first held him in my arms, wrapped in a blanket. Isn’t that funny?” Sandy doesn’t think it’s funny. He thinks it’s maybe all the truth the world needs about men.

There was no sense trying to reason your way through such moments, or trying to understand that neurotic attraction; best to just step back from the drop, put the gun back in its holster, drive away from the barracks.

These days it’s a lot more about how you feel than what you do. And I think that’s wrong.

He got them where they belonged only after poking one bow into his mouth and the other into his left eyebrow.

A harmonic,” Tony said. “That’s when two things start to vibrate together, like tuning-forks or wine-glasses.” Curtis was nodding. “Yeah, that’s it. I don’t know what could be causing it, but it’s very powerful. It seemed to settle right in the middle of my head, the way the sound of the powerlines up on the Bluff does when you’re standing right underneath them. This is going to sound crazy, but after a minute or so, that hum almost sounded like talking.

there’s a pulse in our heads, all right, same as there’s one in our chests, and it carries unformed, no-language thoughts that most times we can’t even read, and they are usually the important ones.

He had decided the time had come to put the games away, that’s all.

People can get used to just about anything. That’s the best of our lives, I guess. Of course, it’s the horror of them, too.

All at once I felt like crying. And while I am at it, that's the other thing about men - just when you are at your most disgusted with them, they can lay you out some gratuitous act of generosity and all at once, stupid but true, instead of being mad you feel ashamed of yourself for ever having a mean and cynical thought about them.