...and lovers of romance novels and dissident rebels and brothers in Christ and druids and shamans and aphrodisiac vendors and scriveners and purveyors of real fake passports and gun-runners and porters and bric-a-brac trades and mining prospectors short on liquid assets and Siamese twins...

He hiccupped and continued: "I write therefore I come...But unfortunately, my orgies are never eternal!...

Poverty is hereditary just like power, stupidity, and haemorrhoids.

Jazz is the only lever used by all the riffraff of Tram 83 to switch social class as one would subway cars.

Yet torture is above all an art, an artistic discipline just like literature , cinema, or contemporary dance. All detained in the City-State ghettos bitterly missed the torturers of yesteryears, those monsters who worked with the precision of a Swiss watch-maker.

When Malingeau drew himself from his long sleep, the music was still droning in his head. Christelle was already gone. She had taken care to scribble a line on a scrap of paper."I drank your body until my thirst was worn.