She Who Waits

I’ve heard people speak of themselves as addicted to reading, but I think those people never stole from their family so they could afford this month’s serial, or sucked off a sailor for a new book of short stories.

For a while a person is a junkie and a bartender or a junkie and a father or a junkie and a thief, but after a while he’s just a junkie.

Somewhere along the line people reduce themselves to numbers in a ledger, and at that point you’re truly damned. It’s a rather concise definition of power – when you no longer need to look at the names.

Our language has yet to develop a proper send-off for leaving a close friend’s deathbed.

Be careful,' I hissed, then released him. 'Keep one eye on your back, and two on your best friend.' 'That's three eyes.' 'You'll need four to survive what's coming,' I said.

I know none of that’s true, of course – your impulse for self-destruction is too sharp to be anything but authentic.

Evil is best served without a patina of hypocrisy.

The lower you are on the pole, the more events seem to be governed by chance. Climb up a few steps and you realize that there’s an order to the whole thing, the dice are loaded and the cards well marked.

the body can decay right in front of you, go from a tool that expresses your will to an anchor dragging you down to hell.

I leaned back into my chair, folded my arms together and made like I was pondering. ‘I understand. You’re worried about the future.’ ‘Damn right.’ ‘Let me tell you something about the future – it isn’t the present. And in the present I’m guaranteeing you that there’s nothing that your supplier will do to you tomorrow that I won’t do to you today, now, right this very moment. Might as well postpone getting dead. When you think about it, isn’t that all we’re ever doing?

Because it’s a lit fuse, love – you light it yourself, and you stand around the powder keg afterward, grinning from ear to ear.

I’m not agitated,’ I said. ‘I’m just violent. What gets done to you will be the consequence of cautious premeditation.

I walked over to the guy behind the bar, the one I'd followed from Low Town. Up close he was bigger than I realized, solid shoulders and a crew cut and a gut pushing past his waistband. He stared down at me from across the counter, trying not to show fear. "You're pretty short," I said. He laughed awkwardly. "I said, you're pretty fucking short." This time he didn't laugh. "I heard you." "Shorter than me." "I guess." "Say it." "Say what?" "Tell me you're shorter than me." "Are you fucking serious?" "Yes." He shot a look over at Sully. I put my hand up to block the view, snapped my fingers. "Your boss can't make you no taller." "I'm shorter than you," he said, and he said it without a stutter.

There was a Brazilian hippie I met once on a path in a jungle near a beach who gave me a half of his coconut, and I never felt that I properly thanked him. So, thanks.

Power isn’t something you sit on, it’s something you chase after. And it moves fast – if you want to hold onto it, you’d better not burden yourself with anything as heavy as decency.

We had enough in common for understanding, but too much for friendship.

You got no business coming in here and playing the asshole.’ ‘I am an asshole, Sully. We haven’t even scraped the surface yet.

Odd, but no matter how high you rise in the halls of power, it’s impossible to escape the conviction that our collective fates are largely determined by the petty jealousies of overgrown adolescents.

existence is bitter and uncompromisingly cruel, and no entity responsible for its creation and upkeep could be called decent.

the rat king, they call it, unimaginatively. My long association with the city’s rodent population has yet to confirm its existence, but it’s a potent image, one brought to mind with the sudden arrival of the Carroll children. Their entry was preceded by roughly twenty seconds of screaming, a duet that grew louder as they approached. There were two of them, a boy and a girl to judge by the harmony. Physically, they took after their mother, which is to say they’d never win any beauty contests. I got the sense they took after her in spirit as well, which is to say they’d never win anything.

My server kept coming over to refill my coffee, though my bladder was about ready to burst as it was. I felt kind of bad about taking up a seat for so long, but he didn’t seem to mind. He was that gregarious sort that

When bowing to the inevitable, it’s best to do so low, and quickly.

On the walls were a series of paintings depicting the Duke in various elaborate situations. The Duke on a battlefield, the Duke at hunt, the Duke overlooking his lands, the Duke on the shitter. I made up that last one.