...I am happy to welcome you to a town peopled in morons exclusively. Furthermore, I hope that your transformation to moron is not an unpleasant experience.

It is hard to find a friend,' I said. 'It is the hardest thing in this world,' he agreed.

I will admit he is unusual, but that is perhaps the closest I could come to complimenting him.

I sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter what we do. Money comes and goes.’ I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t matter and you know it doesn’t.

I had never been with a woman for longer than a night, and they had always been whores. And while throughout each of these speedy encounters I tried to maintain a friendliness with the women, I knew in my heart it was false, and afterward always felt remote and caved in. I had in the last year or so given up whores entirely, thinking it best to go without rather than pantomime human closeness.

I lay in the dark thinking about the difficulties of family, how crazy and crooked the stories of a bloodline can be.

He only wished to fight and cultivate an anger toward me, thus alleviating his guilt, but I would not abet him in this.