These stories are ghosts, bringing people back from the dead. Just for a moment. For a visit. Every story is a ghost.

Everyone has something wrong. And for a while, her heart just sort of flat lined.

"Getting fired," Tyler says, "is the best thing that could happen to any of us. That way, we’d quit treading water and do something with our lives."

I'm not really into comfort books. There are too many of those as it is. Just sort of narcotic books, like my grandmother used to read. They have value like Paxil has value, but there's plenty of them in the world already. There's a shortage of confronting, stimulating, exciting books.

"This isn’t really death," Tyler says, "We’ll be legend. We won’t grow old." I tongue the barrel into my cheek and say, Tyler, you’re thinking of vampires.

There's no way you can get the past right. You can pretend. You can delude yourself, but you can't re-create what's over.

The evil queen was stupid to play Snow White's game. There's an age where a woman has to move on to another kind of power. Money, for example. Or a gun.