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“But time has passed and now I am alone again. Shadows leer and I hear laughter from some dark place. I close my eyes and dream in orange and purple. Once I was the Chemical Prince; tonight I am pale and depressed. At the end of my journey will be comfort and dim lighting. Between here and there I will love nothing but oxygen. In time there will be electric piano and the blood in my head and I’ll wish I could vanish into steam. . . .”

“When she finally slipped away I felt the terror drain from me to follow her into places I could not go. So feeble now, enervated by long proximity to the demons of another. I was afraid that when I woke up the angel would speak through her again, or the angry child for whom time had frozen in that one frenzied moment when her father forced himself on her. . . .”

“Ronan imagined the long journey of the priests from the passenger cars to the boiler, to cast the fresh body into the flames to replenish the impetus of the locomotive, that it might carry itself over the next mountain and far beyond. . . .”

“Bits of her cracked. Broke off and took up residence in the foreign lands she roamed. They would grow and culture. She would turn down lost avenues and find her laughter baked into the brick street plains. Moments from her childhood would play out in the bloom of some short-lived butterfly parade. . . .”

“There is a certain comfort that comes with the absence of choice, in knowing where you’ll live and work and who you’ll marry and how many children you’ll have. Yet our parents and grandparents and great grandparents, the ones who had children while still teenagers because it was the only thing to do, have worked tirelessly so that we could choose something else for ourselves. Incidentally, they have also given us the exquisite privilege of regret. . . .”

“We took some pictures on that hill—with “HOLLYWOOD” looming in the background. I took my shirt off and put on my goofy white sunglasses. John unbuttoned his shirt and put his hands on his hips. We told ourselves this was work; we were creating an image for VIII Nothing. The message was this: Where there are cities, we will go to them; and when we get there, we will be your friend. . . .”

“Along the way, he meets and falls in love with a dozen or so women, befriends an honest-to-God psychopath, sees High On Fire perform in Oakland, is diagnosed with a mental illness, eats at a Denny’s with the hardest dudes in existence (writers Tim Rogers and Zak “Delicious” McCune), writes a suicide note, walks in on two consenting and lustful adults engaged in the act, gets lost in the sinful parade of Bourbon Street, sleeps on a table in a two-story deli in Manhattan, and swaps saliva with the lead singer of Deer Tick in a bowling alley/music venue at midnight on New Year’s Day. . . .”

“He degrades me to this, strips me of my intellect, my goodness, my passion and my freedom. He leaves me a raw shadow, dripping with charm and sexuality and lacking anything that should define a human being. He draws me with such shallowness that I lack rationality. . . .”

“I took an elevator up to the fifth floor. I walked past an enormous window on my way to the clinic where doctors and scientists were waiting for me, and only me, to show up. I stopped. I turned around and stepped up to the glass. Through the pattering droplets on the window, I could make out the vast expanse of a lonesome sky. It was swirled with muted blues and purples and planet-eating blackness. Low-hanging clouds were illuminated with an apocalyptic pallet of hazy orange-reds and red-yellows—all of it light pollution. Maybe the light was coming from Washington, D.C., I thought. I shrugged. Who gave a damn. Not me. Soon it would be midnight. I had to be on a plane in nine hours. I wondered if that was enough time to cure malaria. . . .”

“Two beers in, the interviewer stands as a lone sentry near the venue entrance, where the fire can be felt, and new faces can be seen. Jessi Darlin is one of those faces. She is 5’3” and dressed in a leotard covered in sequins. She is wearing wrestling boots. Her blood-red lipstick and pale complexion give her an otherworldly appearance. . . .”