It's always the mother's fault, ain't it?" she said softly, collecting her coat. "That boy turn out bad cause his mama a drunk, or she a junkie. She let him run wild, she don't teach him right from wrong. She never home when he back from school. Nobody ever say his daddy a drunk, or his daddy not home after school. And nobody ever say they some kids just damned mean.

It's an apathy so absolute that it's like a hole you might fall in.

I didn't care about anything. And there's a freedom in apathy, a wild, dizzying liberation on which you can almost get drunk. You can do anything. Ask Kevin.

A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.

Change is like that: you are no longer where you were; you are not yet where you will get; you are nowhere exactly.

The most sumptuous experience of ingestion is in-between: remembering the last bite and looking forward to the next one.

Kevin was a shell game in which all three cups were empty.