"Turning your ankle hurts like hell, even if you're a superhero."

"Don't be ridiculous, Charlie, people love the parents who beat their kids in department stores. It's the ones who just let their kids wreak havoc that everybody hates."

"Rivera rubbed his temples. 'Satan told you to do it?' he said wearily.'No.''Elvis?''I told you, it's supernatural."

"My fans have great senses of humor and eat too much chocolate."

"Lash had been explaining to her that it's impolite to refer to an African American as a nigga, unless one was another African American, when Troy Lee came in and said, 'She only speaks Cantonese.''She does not. She keeps coming in and saying 'What's up my nigga?'''Oh yeah. She does that to me, too. Did you give her a pound?''No. I didn't give her a pound, motherfucker. She called me a nigga.''Well, she's not going to quit unless you give her a pound. It's just the way she rolls.''That's some bullshit, Troy.''It's her couch."

"Whistler,' Manet called. 'How's your mother?"

"Science, you don't know, looks like magic."

"Diogenes carried a bowl with him for years, but one day saw a man drinking from his cupped palm and declared, 'I have been a fool, burdened all these years by the weight of a bowl when a perfectly good vessel lay at the end of my wrist."

"If there was anything I learned from John the Baptist, it was that the sooner you confess a mistake, the quicker you can get on to making new and better mistakes."

"And I'll have you know that if you hurt my son again, if he so much as sighs sadly over his coffee, I will hire a man, a Russian, probably, to hunt you down and rip all that shiny black hair from your head, then break your skinny arms and legs, and set you on fire, and then put you out with a hammer. And should there be children from your beastly rutting, I shall have the Russian man cut them to tiny pieces and feed them to Madame Jacob's dog. because, although he may be only a worthless, simpleminded, libertine artist, Lucien is my favorite, and I will not have him hurt. Do you understand?"

"If you think anyone is sane you just don't know enough about them."

"Children see magic because they look for it."

"I'm feeling full of tiny princes, bustling to get out into the world and start plotting against one another."

"Love needs room to grow. Like a rose. Or a tumor."

"It's sarcasm, Josh.'Sarcasm?'It's from the Greek, sarkasmos. To bite the lips. It means that you aren't really saying what you mean, but people will get your point. I invented it, Bartholomew named it.'Well, if the village idiot named it, I'm sure it's a good thing.'There you go, you got it.'Got what?'Sarcasm.'No, I meant it.'Sure you did.'Is that sarcasm?'Irony, I think.'What's the difference?'I haven't the slightest idea.'So you're being ironic now, right?'No, I really don't know.'Maybe you should ask the idiot.'Now you've got it.'What?'Sarcasm."

"Why write a song when no one can play the notes or understand the lyrics?"

"It's kinda hard to get yourself into a good three-toweler when you got the dick of death."

"You sure about this writer thing son?"

"The Angel Gabriel disappeared once for sixty years and they found him on earth hiding in the body of a man named Miles Davis."

"Nothing evokes the prurient like puritanism."

"Nobody's perfect. Well, there was this one guy, but we killed him...."

"I'm beginning to wonder,' said Kent, sitting down now on an overturned wooden tub. 'Who do I serve? Why am I here?'You are here, because, in the expanding ethical ambiguity of our situation, you are steadfast in your righteousness. It is to you, our banished friend, that we all turn-a light amid the dark dealings of family and politics. You are the moral backbone on which the rest of us hang our bloody bits. Without you we are merely wiggly masses of desire writhing in our own devious bile.'Really?' asked the old knight.Aye,' said I.I'm not sure I want to keep company with you lot, then."

"I love you above all things, even pie."

"But to remain historically accurate, I would have had to leave out an important question that I felt needed to be addressed, which is, 'What if Jesus had known kung fu?"

"The Beta Male is seldom the strongest or the fastest, but because he can anticipate danger, he far outnumbers his Alpha Male competition. The world is led by Alpha Males, but the machinery of the world turns on the bearings of the Beta Male."

"My children are monsters, Kiro thought. And I am responsible. Perhaps if I had read them the haikus of Basho when they were little instead of that American manifesto of high-pressure sales, Green Eggs and Ham..."

"Does the work get easier once you know what you are doing?''Your lungs grow thick with stone dust and your eyes bleary from the sun and fragments thrown up by the chisel. You pour your lifeblood out into works of stone for Romans who will take your money in taxes to feed soldiers who will nail your people to crosses for wanting to be free. Your back breaks, your bones creak, your wife screeches at you, and your children torment you with open begging mouths, like greedy baby birds in the nest. You go to bed every night so tired and beaten that you pray to the Lord to send the angel of death to take you in your sleep so you don't have to face another morning. It also has its downside."

"For me, 'Lamb' started out as a further exploration of the phenomenon of faith and the responsibility of a messiah that I touched on in 'Coyote Blue' and 'Island of the Sequined Love Nun,' but it ended up being an exploration of the true meaning of sacrifice, loyalty, and friendship."

"Blessed with the Beta Male imagination, he spent much of his life squinting into the future so he might spot ways in which the world was conspiring to kill him..."

"I like a girl with a substantial bottom,' said Renoir, drawing in the air the size bottom he preferred."

"Author's WarningIf you're buying this book as a gift for your grandma or a kid, you should be aware that it contains cusswords as well as tasteful depictions of cannibalism and people in their forties having sex. Don't blame me. I told you."

"As much as I encourage communication with my readers, I don't want reviews from them, simply because I don't need to be hamstrung in the middle of working on something."

"Is she special? (asks the gay waiter)' I thinks she's going to break my heart' On arrival of the girl' The flannel is fine honey,but I have'nt seen anyone that over accesorized since batman!"

"Hope is bulletproof, truth just hard to hit."

"Love: the sickest of Irony's sick jokes. The place where logic and order go to die."

"Boredom can be a lethal thing on a small island."

"So I am death' Charlie said then turned to his daughter while buttering his toast.'This is death toast sweety."

"Lucien, women are wondrous, mysterious, and magical creatures, who should be treated not only with respect but with reverence, perhaps even awe. Now go sweep the steps."

"As if someone had thrown a hand grenade into the middle of a teddy bear orgy and the only survivors had had their fur blown off."

"The prospect of change is a many-fanged beast, my dear."

"The Painting is not shit,' said Lucien.'I know,' said Henri. 'That was just part of the subterfuge. I am of royal lineage; subterfuge is one of the many talents we carry in our blood, along with guile and hemophilia."

"Canada is a myth people made up to entertain children, like the Tooth Fairy. There's no such place."

"In another Christmas story, Dale Pearson, evil developer, self-absorbed woman hater, and seemingly unredeemable curmudgeon, might be visited in the night by a series of ghosts who, by showing him bleak visions of Christmas future, past, and present, would bring about in him a change to generosity, kindness, and a general warmth toward his fellow man. But this is not that kind of Christmas story, so here, in not too many pages, someone is going to dispatch the miserable son of a bitch with a shovel. That's the spirit of Christmas yet to come in these parts. Ho, ho, ho."

"You cannot believe what you do not believe, Rumi siad. I am an Untouchable because my karma dictates it."

"No matter where he went in the City, there was an odoriferous mix of food and vehicles, like the alchemic concoctions of some mad gourmet mechanic: Kung Pao Saab Turbo, Buick Skylark Carbonara, Sweet-and-Sour Metro Bus, Honda Bolognese with Burning Clutch Sauce."

"On the radio, turned low, Reba sang of hard times with the full authority of a cross-eyed redheaded millionaire."

"I gave you all!' screeched Lear, waving a palsied claw at Regan.'And you took your bloody time giving it, too, you senile old fuck,' said Regan."

"When I teach seminars, I tell people, 'Your stuff has to look like something that's out there, because otherwise nobody will take a chance on you.'"

"It was the sound of a thousand hungry children crying, ten thousand widows tearing their hair over their husband's graves, a chorus of angels singing the last dirge on the day of God's death."

"I'm poor and my cat is huge."