I want to take you away from this," I say, motioning around the kitchen, spastic. "From sushi and elves and... STUFF.

With "Taipei" Tao Lin becomes the most interesting prose stylist of his generation...

Writing fiction is an act of imagination and fantasizing, and it's not relating in prose what you've been doing for the last two or three years.

I'm into, oh murders and executions mostly. It depends.

At Columbus Circle, a juggler wearing a trench cloak and top hat, who is usually at this location afternoons and who calls himself Stretch Man, performs in front of a small, uninterested crowd; though I smell prey, and he seems worthy of my wrath, I move on in search of a less dorky target. Though if he'd been a mime, odds are he'd already be dead.

'Do you know what Ed Gein said about women?' [...] '"When I see a pretty girl walking down the street I think two things. One part of me wants to take her out and talk to her and be real nice and sweet and treat her right."' I stop finish my J&B in one swallow. 'What does the other part of him think?' Hamlin asks tentatively. 'What her head would look like on a stick...'

Not being able to find meaning can be just as powerful as finding meaning.