“Blood began to flow, at first cautiously, as if embarrassed by its appearance; a few thin red lines exploring the gravitational trajectory of its new terrain. Now it flowed faster, steadily stainin...”

“Around the outside of the room other beautiful women wearing little or nothing at all flitted between the infatuated, intoxicated men, sometimes luring them away for a private dance. The men would ...”

“He dropped the phone back onto its cradle, began to turn around and felt a sudden ice-cold furrow open up in his side. Strength drained from his legs, and a moment later he sank to his knees. There...”

“Sometimes he missed the numbed, walking-underwater feeling feel that the cocktail of narcotics used to give him. But if a situation went down in here, he was going to need all of his wits to get ou...”

“After a week he was moved to a different wing and into a shared six-by-eight with a grizzled old con called Alf. He had faded tattoos that stained most of the visible skin on his hands, arms and ne...”

“Moriarty rarely smiled,and then usually to terrify some poor victim. The first time I heard him laugh, I thought he had been struck by a deadly poison and the stutter escaping through his locked ja...”

“The guard looked down at the scarlet bloodstains blooming on his chest. He appeared to think of something that he needed to say, but as his lips began to form the words, his knees gave up the strai...”

“I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to...”

“[C]oncepts of dying in to a heaven or hell seem a good deal more political than spiritual. (124)”

“I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. ...”