But when a girl gives a boy a dead squid - that had to mean something.

People don't remember me. Really. It's not a paranoid thing; I just have this habit of slipping through memories. It doesn't bother me all that much, except I guess that's a lie; it does. For some reason, I test very high on forgettability.

I seemed busy, busy, busy, but I suppose, if pressed, I might have admitted that, for all my frenzy, I was very much alone.

One of the things that happens to careers out here is that people destroy themselves because they begin to think they're wonderful. They begin to think they know what they're doing, and the minute that happens, it's over.

Chapter One. The Bride." He held up the book then. "I'm reading it to you for relax." He practically shoved the book in my face. "By S. Morgenstern. Great Florinese writer. The Princess Bride. He too came to America. S. Morgenstern. Dead now in New York. The English is his own. He spoke eight tongues." Here my father put down the book and held up all his fingers. "Eight. Once in Florin City...

The enemy is always in the mind.

You could concentrate much more deeply when you were alone with agony.