Three times a day Petrovich showed up at the nurse's office for his injections, always using the hypodermic needle himself like the most craven of junkies, though after shooting up he would play the concert piano in the auditorium with astounding artistry, as though insulin were the elixir of genius.

You can tell when something's not moving forward anymore. When the doubts you have about it don't go away.

our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.

The only way we know it's true is that we both dreamed it. That's what reality is. It's a dream everyone has together.

He had the feeling that there was something physically behind his eyes, blocking the light.

College wasn't like the real world. In the real world people dropped names based on their renown. In college, people dropped names based on their obscurity.

Is there anything as incredible as the love story of your own parents? Anything as hard to grasp as the fact that those two over-the-hill players, permanently on the disabled list, were once in the starting lineup? It's impossible to imagine my father, who in my experience was aroused mainly by the lowering of interest rates, suffering the acute, adolescent passions of the flesh.