“And in a land accustomed to so much anguish, Chase tried to be careful with words. His soccer moms began assigningnicknames during the first day of official practice: Difom, Kakas, Kochma, and Mald...”

“I believe a family just isnt complete without skeletons. My dearest momma clean bit off my daddys nose right around the time they divorced.”

“Noriega wound up like a baseball pitcher on top of the bed and hurled the small gun, but was low and outside for a ball. His tight-fitting house dress was bunched up high on his chubby thighs, expo...”

“Limp finally spoke. Do you think you could kill a person and not get all crazy about it?”

“Bearing witness from the sides of the room, ten or more lepers shouted at the bizarre scene, Diable! Diable! And then chants of some sort, or prayers, followed by more shouts of Diable! They were h...”

“The monkey liked most humans. They left food cans outside their homes for his family to rummage through in the morningsun. Some yelled and threw sticks, but were slow and didnt bite. Humans were mo...”

“Anytime one tries to take fragments of one's personal mythology and make them understandable to the whole world, one reaches back to the past. It must be dreamed again.”

“I can't bear literary snobbery.”

“He was intrigued by the power of words, not the literary words that filled the books in the library but the sharp, staccato words that went into the writing of news stories. Words that went for the...”

“They never opened the door which leads to the soul.”

“Above his head at street level, he saw an angled aileron of a scarlet Porsche, its jaunty fin more or less at the upper edge of his window frame. A pair of very soft, clean glistening black shoes a...”

“As we stood there, chest high in water, I felt like I was in the middle of my own romance novel.”

“I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express my...”