I have spent my life falling. Not the kind that Tiny's talking about. He's talking about love. I'm talking about life. In my kind of falling, there's no landing. There's only hitting the ground. Hard. Dead, or wanting to be dead. So the whole time you're falling, it's the worst feeling in the world. Because you feel you have no control over it. Because you know how it ends.

The universe is biased toward consciousness because the universe wants to be noticed. It's a way into existential hope that doesn't have too much cliché wrapped around it.

If he is anything other than a total gentleman, I’m going to gouge his eyes out.” “So you’re into it.” “Withholding judgment! When can I see you?” “Certainly not until you finish An Imperial Affliction.” I enjoyed being coy. “Then I’d better hang up and start reading.” “You’d better,” I said, and the line clicked dead without another word. Flirting was new to me, but I liked it.

But it was sure a privilege to love him, huh?" I nodded into his shirt. "Gives you an idea how I feel about you," he said. My old man. He always knew just what to say.

He missed his imagined future.

...And in freedom, most people find sin.

I told him they built a statue of Schultz, and then he said that a monument is cold comfort to a dead man, and then I said that the statue was built not for Schultz, but for us--to remind us how to be human.