Bloomberg weighed three hundred pounds. This itself was historical. I revered his weight. It was an affirmation of humanity's reckless potential; it went beyond legend and returned through mist to the lovely folly of history. To weigh three hundred pounds. What devout vulgarity.

If you know you're worth nothing, only a gamble with death can gratify your vanity.

I slept for four years. I didn't study much of anything. I majored in something called communication arts.

And what's the point of waking up in the morning if you don't try to match the enormousness of the known forces in the world with something powerful in your own life?

Plot a murder, you're saying. But every plot is a murder in effect. To plot is to die, whether we know it or not.

I would never write in response to what I believe the public wanted or needed.

They passed out of the shade beneath the eaves and flew into sunglare and silence and it was an action she only partly saw, elusive and mutely beautiful, the birds so sunstruck they were consumed by light, disembodied, turned into something sheer and fleet and scatter-bright.