I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it's good for the circulation.

Nights without beginning that had no end. Talking about a past as if it'd really happened. Telling themselves that this time next year, this time next year, things were going to be different.

Honey, no offense, but sometimes I think I could shoot you and watch you kick.

I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can't imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else. I haven't been.

A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house. Except for the chrome hooks, he was an ordinary-looking man of fifty or so.

Booze takes a lot of time and effort if you're going to do a good job with it.

there isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails.