The end of a gun looks very big and very back when it's staring you in the face.

God, was I going to have another day of painful thoughts jumping me every time I relaxed? The obvious solution—to just not relax—was kind of sucking.

If something is visceral and unsettling for me, my job is to not look away, not to punk out. Sometimes the dark things come from places inside me, experiences Ive had, that need to be transformed.

Someday, Dante, I will discover how your mind works

To my everlasting relief, he’d also stopped with the starch a few years back . The military made him big on spray starch, but I point-blank refused to touch the stuff after a while. He finally gave up doing it himself, and I manfully restrained myself from pointing out that the world didn’t explode when he did. And they say maturity is just for adults.

I got the idea she'd done her makeup up special for this. Not that she needed much. She was utterly and completely beautiful, except for the hate shining in her eyes.

Well, duh. You're cuter than she is." He said it like he might say, Grass is green or, Gravity works. Something warm opened up inside my chest. It was a nice feeling.