Ordinary parties, he thought, were subtle games of sexual and social badminton.

If life was an arc of light that began in darkness, ended in darkness, the first part of his life had happened in ordinary glare. Here it was as though he had found a polarized lens that deepened and intensified all seen through it.

A spinning coin, still balanced on its rim, may fall in either direction.

And I think that's important, to know how the water's gone over the dam before you start to describe it. It helps to have been over the dam yourself.

No wonder, he thought, that the panhandle people were a godly lot, for they lived in sudden, violent atmospheres. Weather kept them humble.

And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.

If you get the landscape right, the characters will step out of it, and they'll be in the right place.