I understand so very little. But I am not afraid to look: I am a good observer at last. My eyes are open, and I am not afraid.

It was the kind of experience, Molly said, that would grow calluses on an angel's ass.

Promises were like bad checks, easy to write and hard to cash.

Understanding is better than ignorance. Ignorance, unlike life, unlike narrative, is static. Understanding implies a forward motion, thus the possibility of change.

[There was] only one news channel, overseen by a bland and complexly multicultural board of advisors. It broadcast in fifteen languages and was, as a rule, interesting in none of them.

One doesn't have to understand in order to look. One has to look, in order to understand.

We'll do what life always does defy expectations.