Caleb Crain

Since he had given up men he had taken up geography. He visited a new sight or a new neighborhood nearly every weekend.

By its nature a relationship was not an accomplishment. It was just a connection that happened to exist, for as long as it did exist.

_ I__ going to be a writer, he reminded Milo._ And you won__ need literature?_ I__l write my own.

But what are they?_ Annie asked.__n omphalos, probably,_ said Jacob.__ what, dear?_ Melinda asked.__ bellybutton of the world.___ didn__ know it had one.

In Rome the statues, in Paris the paintings, and in Prague the buildings suggest that pleasure can be an education.

It was strange that one couldn__ know in advance which places one was later going to wish to remember.

Unable to see, they were briefly seized by the characteristic Prague anxiety of never finding the entrance--of arriving at one's goal but remaining blocked from it by a wall or a stone on account of having overlooked an alley or medieval door a few dozen yards back, which has served as the approach so immemorially that no one any longer marked or described it.

Like capitalism,_ Carl suggested. ___e__l give you so much pleasure, you__l never want to try another socioeconomic system.

Crisis _ the midwife of capitalism. The __dvisers_ arrive and say, My god, they have no predatory class here. It is an emergency! We must create one immediately. Let us arrange to give everything to a few crooks. Then this country, too, will have a mess of parasites to rule it, to suck the value of the people__ labour.

I suppose it does come with a certain responsibility.___hat does?_ asked Annie.__he magnificence of my person.___ah.

A year ago he had been in America. Two years ago he had been straight. Tonight he was underground, with the remains of the bogey man, lit by the torches of the children who had killed him.

It__ a question of wanting to know how the story turns out. And one can only know that about one story, ever.

He was in the flow of time now. He was in a story.

It is perhaps necessary for something dear to be lost.___hy?___erhaps it is necessary to the making of a story. A story after all is a way of remembering love.

There__ always a story that people are telling about themselves, and sometimes you can get them to tell it ever so slightly differently.