The VW doesn’t make you think of Hitler and genocide. It’s a breast on wheels, a puffy little dream.

It's amazing how life conspires to set you up with what you need.

The kids I knew growing up who worked on bikes all loved the smell of gas. It is the liquid agent for speed.

Since it's fiction, the book resonates, at least for me, on various levels, some of which intimate ideas about history but none of which have the kind of directly causal reasoning you cite.

I think any time you deal with humans and the way they exploit one another and cause pain you are in the realm of politics, on some level.

Motorcycles aren't about gaining agency, I don't think.

There was lots of pleasure in writing The Flamethrowers. Then again, what is pleasure? Some pleasure is easy and other kinds are never quite felt, existing only as the residue of hard work, or more as satisfaction than thrill.