Book-publishing is all about politics. Agents, editors, which books will be puffed, which ignored, etc.

Faculty Meetings are held whenever the need to show off is combined with the imperative of accomplishing nothing.

The parrot holds its food for prim consumption as daintily as any debutante, [with] a predilection for pot roast, hashed-brown potatoes, duck skin, butter, hoisin sauce, sesame seed oil, bananas and human thumb.

Where there is no style, there is in effect no point of view. There is, essentially, no anger, no conviction, no self. Style is opinion, hung washing, the caliber of a bullet, teething beads.

I kneel to my Lord because I am such a failure. I pray, I hope, I look to the Gospels.

September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret.

Yellow is vagueness and luminousness, both.