Sol Luckman

It was a rotten time to try to be a man in America. Until Blue came along I__ never even spent time around a man. Hell, I__ never even seen one. Where were all the men in this once great land?

The Adventure called and I followed with my thumb like a character being written by an intractable author. Which, of course, I was.

The beauty of a metaphor is it doesn't have to be real to ring true. The instant a metaphor becomes true it ceases to be a metaphor, which suggests a disconnect between truth and what's commonly referred to as reality.

In his mother__ honor, vowing not to commit the __ashionable stupidity_ of ignoring things he didn__ understand, Max performed a brave act of nonconformity by accepting the possibility that his dreams might be exactly what they seemed: real.

The evidence never seemed to matter to those in power, who had already made up their minds and did what people typically do when their worldview is threatened by new data: they attacked the messenger.

In the spirit of the Alpha and the Omega, in the way the Alpha was theOmega, and vice versa, he knew the beginning was also the end__nd that the end was just another beginning.

Nothing bonds two solitary individuals like a good shared drunk. This is a scientific fact. It__ important, even necessary for the long-term welfare of the planet to get good and shit-faced with your neighbor every now and then.

The fireworks went on for nearly half an hour, great pulsing strobes, fiery dandelions and starbursts of light brightening both sky and water. It was hard to tell which was reality and which was reflection, as if there were two displays, above and below, going on simultaneously__ne in space-time, mused Max, and the other in time-space.

Down below people were clipping by going nowhere fast. You could feel the long despairing history of the place. You could actually hear it, a low hum like the buzz of a sick bee that resonated with the fragments of a million broken dreams.

Nobody ever goes to that store to shop because it__ too crowded.

I knew I was in deep shit. I didn__ know how deep__ust that I still hadn__ touched bottom.

When it rains it pours and when it shines you get melanoma.

Flying in his dreams was an exhilarating, breathtaking experience, sometimes literally, that tended to leave reality wanting, like riding a roller coaster compared to mowing the lawn.

The feeling was less like chemical intoxication than being drunk on life. Spinning round and round, he experienced absolute bliss_ unadulterated and unconfined__n which he transcended his own personality and became one with everything he perceived.

I wouldn__ be caught dead sacrificing myself for this country.

I wondered about my inner child. In fact, I was troubled. Did I even have an inner child, I asked myself, given that, in essence, I__ just been born?

The simple act of sitting here sipping this cappuccino is its own testament to my commitment to living the writer__ life. Which is to say: doing nothing but doing it exceedingly well.

With the sensation that he was passing through the Looking-Glass, Max stared at his father as if he had never seen him before__imultaneously impressed and unnerved at the thought that, after all these years, he still knew so little about him.