Because it's kind of great, being an idea that everybody likes. But I could never be the idea to myself, not all the way.

"Patience, grasshopper," I counseled. "You don't want to seem overeager." "Right, that's why I said tomorrow," he said. "I want to see you again tonight. But I'm willing to wait all night and much of tomorrow." I rolled my eyes. "I'm serious," he said."You don't even know me," I said. I grabbed the book from the center console. "How about I call you when I finish this?""But you don't even have my phone number," he said."I strongly suspect you wrote it in this book."He broke out into that goofy smile. "And you say we don't know each other."

The human tongue is like wasabi: it's very powerful, and should be used sparingly.

Half-drunk on well-creamed gas station coffee and the exhilarating loneliness of a freeway in nighttime.

It's not fair," I said. "It's just so goddamned unfair." "The world," he said, "is not a wishgranting factory.

While I did not fancy myself a particularly good person, I never thought my first real sexual action would be prostitutional.

But it is a pipe." "No, it's not," I said. It's a drawing of a pipe. Get it? All representations of a thing are inherently abstract. It's very clever.