"In the second or so it had taken that bullet to leave its muzzle and penetrate my father's heart, between the pressure of that finger on the trigger and my father's soundless roar, somewhere in that infernal compression of decision, action, and consequence, I was forever altered."

“It takes real sangfroid to stare death out. Planning your own murder is a delicate undertaking, requiring as much foresight and paperwork as that invested by some girls into their first weddings.”

“Grief is a sphere in that it can be turned a quarter turn or turned a millionth, it can be spun on any axis and by any degree and still its aspect is the same.”

“In wanting to kill himself, a man wants only to kill his consciousness of pain. I think therefore I am; therefore if I am not, I cannot think.”

“Had he pushed my thighs apart right then and there, his sunned skin dark against the tallow pallor of my own nocturnal flesh, and plunged two of his thick fingers thick within me, I would have felt it apt, so natural.”

“From the standpoint of the present, the future is always a derangement of ambitions.”

“Pills are the great infantilizers of our time. Adulthood can be wearying, and so some grow nostalgic about childhood dependencies.”