Until you write books, you don’t realize that the book does decide certain things. It must sound like complete insanity to non-writers. And maybe it is.

Art didn’t have to provide answers. It only had to ask questions.

You don’t realize how old you’ve become until someone young comes around to remind you.

Condom,” she said. He grabbed a gold square off his nightstand, tore it open, and milked the rubber down his shaft. These were awkward seconds for a man, no matter how attractive the woman under him appeared—legs open, breasts resting on the rib cage—because a man has to stay hard while the woman watches in some negative quiet where irrevocable judgments are formed.

Why was a person’s exact cause of death so often more fascinating than what they did with their life? Because it explained how they suffered, Mills thought, because it was a reminder that everyone suffers in the end.

It’s all a fucking trap, owning things, places, people. The way I see it, we don’t own things. We get owned.

Do you know what geography really is?” Ted asked. “It’s not the shapes of countries or a list of trade routes. Geography is a snapshot of war, plain and simple. It’s a record of the state of hostile powers at a moment of suspended animation.

Your little eco-friendly fairy tale ain’t going to happen. This was farming land long before it was cute-house land.

To discover someone was ordinary always struck Mills as a kind of betrayal. Whenever a man Mills presumed was gay turned out to be straight, the aura about him crumbled, the clues reassembling into the most indistinctive brand of human being—normal, hiding nothing, a mind like a weather vane that moved with the prevailing winds.

All close friendships are marked with competition. Our earliest tests are against our siblings and playmates, and some of that rivalry endures amongst friends into adulthood. Like dogs play fighting, you learn not to bite hard.