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.

Unless you can change the past, you’re wasting the present on this guilt

For a while he'd tried molding himself into the tragic Romantic hero, brooding and staring clench-jawed off into space as he composed dark verse in his head. But it turned out that trying to appear tragic in Incontinence, Indiana, was redundant, and his mother kept shouting at him and making him forget his rhymes. "Tommy, if you keep grinding your teeth like that, they'll wear away and you'll have to have dentures like Aunt Ester." Tommy only wished his beard was as heavy as Aunt Ester's---then he could stare out over the moors while he stroked it pensively.

She was an alien, really - a sort of eating, pooping, tantrum machine - and he didn't understand anything about her species.

Mr. Fresh looked up. "The book says if we don't do our jobs everything could go dark, become like the Underworld. I don't know what the Underworld is like, Mr. Asher, but I've caught some of the road show from there a couple of times, and I'm not interested in finding out. How 'bout you?" "Maybe it's Oakland," Charlie said. "What's Oakland?" "The Underworld." "Oakland is not the Underworld!" "The Tenderloin?" Charlie suggested.

One day the good times had to keep on rolling, and all of life's horseshit would turn to circuses.

Marry for love, stay married, and raise happy children who are quick to laugh and slow to judge.