Luz’s father had had it; it was how he kept himself atop everyone around him. He believed harder in stupider things, and there was somehow authority in this.

Now, I’ve made mistakes. I’ve lost people. But you’ve thrown them away. There is an important difference.

There was always some savior out in the wilderness, some senator, some patent, some institute, some cell.

I don’t know, maybe it’s easier to be lost than found. At least there’s energy in lostness. Something to be done.

Like all our memories, we like to take it out once in a while and lay it flat on the kitchen table, the way my wife does with her sewing patterns, where we line up the shape of our lives against that which we thought it would be by now.

Sometimes love is a wound that opens and closes, opens and closes, all our lives.

The mind is a mine. So often we revisit its winding, unsound caverns when we ought to stay out.

A promise unkept will take a man’s mind.

Sal was young and undeniably stupid, though his stupidity was of the rare variety that provoked envy in the more intelligent, rather than contempt, for it would surely leave the boy content for all his days.

Jules liked that I was a local. I made her feel authentic, which is especially important to Californians.