a swell of gratitude and appreciation for his assistant, as opposed to the murderous rage he felt toward the rest of his staff

She looks like someone I want to know, or maybe even be.

It's finished. Everything went past, without me.

I think the one thing that's changed over time is that I've come to realise, as a fiction writer, the fact that I don't think it will work out, doesn't mean that it actually won't.

I was a stepchild in two different families. The hardest thing about being a stepchild is you know that in some way everything would be easier if you didnt exist.

The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh.

Oh we'll know each other forever, Bix says. The days of losing touch are almost gone.