Rand

“there’s freedom in looking crazy.”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“Democracy in crime was turning out no different from democracies everywhere: a sublime idea in theory, soiled by the reality that deep down nobody really believes that all men are created equal.”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“Down at the foamy shoreline, where small tight waves explode against black rocks, a lifeguard with feet wedged in the wet and vaguely tangerine sand stands shirtless like a magnificent sea-Jesus. An ill-timed journey into a breaker knocks a boy on his little back. A bald man throws a tennis ball for his Labrador and a second, unrelated dog bounds in after it. Through a gauze of mist a brunette—tall, and from where we’re sitting seemingly riddled with breasts—kicks water on the sunlit torso of her blond companion. There are three other drinkers in the place, already tethered to the sunbleached bar. It is eleven a.m. Slumped in his cumbersome mechanised wheelchair that squeaks somewhere down by the left back wheel when he’s doing pressure lifts, Aldo squints out from sand-whipped windows into the tumour of searing light. He turns to me and says, ‘I’m nobody’s muse.’ I think: That’s a great line right there. I take out my notebook and when he shoots me an outraged look I say, ‘That’s right, motherfucker. I’m writing it down.”
― Steve Toltz, Quicksand

“From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away.”
― Raymond Chandler, The High Window