What can she possibly teach you, twenty seven names for tears?

A couple of times, I could have turned a trick. But I didn't want to start. I knew how it would play. When you started thinking it was easy, you were forgetting what it cost.

It was her first book, an indigo cover with a silver moonflower, an art nouveau flower, I traced my finger along the silver line like smoke, whiplash curves. ... I touched the pages her hands touched, I pressed them to my lips, the soft thick old paper, yellow now, fragile as skin. I stuck my nose between the bindings and smelled all the readings she had given, the smell of unfiltered cigarettes and the espresso machine, beaches and incense and whispered words in the night. I could hear her voice rising from the pages. The cover curled outward like sails.

When you started thinking it was easy, you were forgetting what it cost.

He hated crowds, never liked punk. He couldn't handle the nakedness of the rage -his own so sophisticated and finely tuned. He could never see the similarity between himself and Donnie Draino screaming into a mic.

One can bear anything. The pain we cannot bear will kill us outright.

this was the wonderful thing about strangers. they were big blank pieces of paper, you could draw watever you like on their impresionable surfaces