Once, during the drinking phase, Wendy had accused him of desiring his own destruction but not possessing the necessary moral fiber to support a full-blown deathwish. So he manufactured ways in which other people could do it, lopping a piece at a time off himself and their family.

It had that comfortably sprung, lived-in look that library books with a lively circulation always get; bent page corners, a dab of mustard on page 331, a whiff of some reader's spilled after-dinner whiskey on page 468. Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us, how good stories abide, unchanged and mutely wise, while we poor humans grow older and slower.

You cant be too careful on a skateboard.

I know your mother lives in your head - almost everyone's mother does, I guess - but you can't let her have her way on this one

Now panic beats and flutters inside my skull like a flock of starlings locked in an attic.

Time is a face on the water.

I have two amazing things in my life: I'm pain-free and I'm debt-free.