Idea dump:
- She had a pulse and I could tell that what she was doing was blinking and breathing, but behind the eyes you could tell there was nothing but sawdust and dead electricity.
- I’ll tell you what’s in Providence, you rat bastards: Providence is in Providence. I had never been there, I told them, so I may as well go. I almost felt like it was my duty. What if Providence was the United States’—or even the world’s—best kept secret? Maybe we had all been conditioned to dismiss the great state of Rhode Island and its fine capital as part of some well-intentioned state government initiative to keep the riffraff out. “Don’t go to Providence, Rhode Island!” the billboards had said, maybe, in our collective memories, which were badly warped anyway. “You might get killed!”
- Gritt’s shotgun had, at one time, been a police standard-issue pump shotgun. Over the years he had heavily modified it to suit his needs. He had the barrel filed down and the stock was carved out like a jack-o-lantern to reduce the overall weight. The ammo capacity was increased from four to ten, and a scope was added to the top of the gun. He called his creation Sin-Daddy Slim.
- That night, I was alone and sprawled out on the hood of a compact sport utility vehicle in a podunk American town that no longer knew my name. I was ruminating on things that I thought were interesting or useful, like molecules and dark matter and orgasms and tangerines and even rock and roll. I laughed like hell thinking about the movements of Earth—that wild, unseen carnival ride I had been strapped to as long as I could remember. With my arms folded behind my head, I gazed upward with blank eyes, letting that blue-black darkness and all of its little points of light fill the space inside of me where there had been nothing before.
- It’s funny: you can look someone straight in the eyes—and I mean really look deep inside—and tell them an absolute truth and they’ll think you’re nuts anyway. I’m starting to think that half the bums and lunatics who have approached me have had some truth to their insane tales: freaks and creeps—outliers—with nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no one to love them in a broken, diseased world that doesn’t make a lick of sense.
- An animal who is bored or lonely or sad will wander off and find something to make that go away. With humans you run the risk of them buying an automatic rifle and picking off children as they get off the school bus.
- In the twilight of my time on Earth, I decided I would attempt, one last time, to understand my own species. I would study them in their sinner’s paradise, in their hedon parade. . . .
- This thing is so God damn bloodless. Cheap sentiments and no substance.
- There have been people like me over the years. We never last long. We’re here to give you a few books or a few songs and then we leave quietly.
- If I survive this, it will be a halfway decent book. And if it isn’t then I truly am mad.
- Light a plant on fire and the secrets of the universe faintly enter into your brain.
- I awake and become aware of my surroundings. First I define the physical properties of the world before filling them with the memories I have of them.
Ain’t nothin’ better than ideas, man.