Pat Cadigan

"He had the sudden urge to put his arms around her, but the look on her face said that if he made a move toward her, she would move away, and maybe she would keep moving away from him until the distanc…"

"It was a lonely thing. There was no way to be sure if it meant the same thing to both of you. He’d forgotten that part of making love, how you couldn’t assume that intent was as joined as bodies were."

"If you’re really going to die on me, you could at least rub my neck before you go."

"Ninety percent of life was being there, and the rest was being there on time."

"The Beater has still been young enough to feel immortal, at least on his better days. It was all, Wow, if we don’t slow down, we’re gonna die before we get old, except somehow it hadn’t happened that …"

"The authenticity may have been dubious, but the excitement had been real."

"Everything seemed to happen when you were looking the other way."

"That was it, then, civilization was officially collapsed if the cops had stopped ticketing abandoned cars and roosted on them instead."