Nadine found herself standing in front of a row of streaming faces, like waxworks of forgotten celebrities being melted down before coming back as more contemporary figures.

. . . a shrunken old man, squashed into the chair like a stubbed-out cigarette.

People are always ashamed of the misery that has befallen them, as though it were an act of divine retribution for a long-forgotten sin of theirs

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

The pain wasn’t tidal. That was the lesson of the dream which was really a memory. The pain only appeared to come and go. The pain was like the piling, sometimes covered and sometimes visible, but always there.

It was darker than a carload of assholes.