An adventure story is fear recalled in comfort.

He wanted her to experience all the glorious cheese of life.

And I'll have you know that if you hurt my son again, if he so much as sighs sadly over his coffee, I will hire a man, a Russian, probably, to hunt you down and rip all that shiny black hair from your head, then break your skinny arms and legs, and set you on fire, and then put you out with a hammer. And should there be children from your beastly rutting, I shall have the Russian man cut them to tiny pieces and feed them to Madame Jacob's dog. because, although he may be only a worthless, simpleminded, libertine artist, Lucien is my favorite, and I will not have him hurt. Do you understand?

Oh, we are but soft and squishy bags of mortality rolling in a bin of sharp circumstance, leaking life until we collapse, flaccid, into our own despair.

You know, there's a 12 step program for gambling. You should look into that. Twelve steps. Coyote laughed. I'll bet I can do it in six.

The angel has confided in me that he is going to ask the Lord if he can become Spider-Man. [...] The children need heroes, he says. I think he just wants to swing from buildings in tight red jammies.

I think I'm what they call a never-was.