You have wondered, perhaps, why all real accountants wear hats? They are today's cowboys. As will you be. Riding the American range. Riding herd on the unending torrent of financial data. The eddies, cataracts, arranged variations, fractious minutiae. You order the data, shepherd it, direct its flow, lead it where it's needed ... You deal in facts, gentlemen, for which there has been a market since man first crept from the primeval slurry.

Why not? Why not?Why not not, then, if the best reasoning you can contrive is why not?

I love the way you love, but I hate the way I'm supposed to love you back.

Writing fiction takes me out of time. I sit down and the clock will not exist for me for a few hours. That’s probably as close to immortal as we’ll ever get.

She took a sort of abject pride in her mecilessness toward herself.

Almost anything that you pay close, direct attention to becomes interesting.

And I was -- this is just how I was afraid you'd take it. I knew it, that you'd think this means you were right to be afraid all the time and never feel secure or trust me. I knew it'd be "See, you're leaving after all when you promised you wouldn't." I knew it but I'm trying to explain anyway, okay? And I know you probably won't understand this either, but --wait-- just try to listen and maybe absorb this, okay? Ready? Me leaving is not the confirmation of all your fears about me. It is not. It's because of them.