[Sex] is really awkward. You know you have expectations and then it's this great moment of connection and it's a surprise. But that's what so exciting about it is that sense of surprise.

Funny as hell, searingly honest, and urgently real, Sam Pink's Rontel puts to shame most modern fiction. His writing perfectly captures the bizarre parade that is Chicago, with all its gloriously odd and wonderful people. This book possesses both the nerve of Nelson Algren and the existential comedy of Albert Camus.

The city glitters past us with its sharp edges, reminding us of how tiny, how weak, how totally unimportant we are.

What I've learned is that there is nothing in this life that does not fail to disappoint us, even our own deaths.

The world of evil is only as evil as we allow it to be.

I don't like the fact that no one has any imagination anymore. It doesn't pay to be a dreamer because all they really want you to do is answer the phone. Nobody wants you to think about anything new or use your brain or make anything interesting because everything important has already been made. America is over; it's done being brilliant.Everything genius has already been built, like all the great works of art have already been produced.

It is the strain of walking around the world-down the street, riding city buses and elevators, moving from place to place to place-and not knowing who might want to destroy you, who might like to fill your heart with poison, who might rob you and stab you, who might stand above you in the dark with a tarantula.