'I remembered that luminous Russian boychick wonder, stretched like a bantam in the nearby courtyard, gloating and basking in the sun as if some unreflected natural glory was supposed to be all his.'
'I came upon your crazy castle while walking in the woods. It arose upon me suddenly, as I crested the bluff. I was rather unprepared just then, and stood there for a moment, dumfounded.'
'Let me put it to you this way: you make one mistake and it's all over...for good.'
'The man with all the energy owned everything in town. When he finally died, we took his bones one night and threw them in a canvas satchel into a small boat - floated everything down the Delaware in the dark middle hours of night. We were sure, sometime days later, he'd wash out the bay in Philadelphia somewhere. Never did find out what happened.'
'Jeffrey, I lived in a railroad town; oh so long ago.'
'The knock at the door was supposed to be nothing at all - a hand bearing papers? A ledger of sorts? From where it came, the information was already (before I began) tedious, dour and possessed of ideas I did not share. Nonetheless, I decided to go ahead and follow through. There were dozens of reasons, I rationalized.'
'Do I dare salivate at the thought of the cosmos?'
'Sheds, and the manner of all things.'