“Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.”

“There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you.”

“Tessie allowed Milton to press his clarinet to her skin and fill her body with music. At first it only tickled her. But after a while the notes spread deeper into her body. She felt the vibrations ...”

“It was amazing how it worked: the tiniest bit of truth made credible the greatest lies.”

“Planning is for the world's great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to culture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to m...”

“Judge Woodward envisioned the new Detroit as an urban Arcadia of interlocking hexagons. Each wheel was to be separate yet united. This dream never quite came to be. Planning is for the world's grea...”

“A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel reader is not prepared to give.”

“Prose divides shame into stations.”

“He lifted his arm that had been resting on her shoulders and gazed at the words she had written on his hand. He had been branded as cattle are branded to show whom they belong to. The cold mountain...”