...dogs snapping at the brush as it spins this way, that way, eluding the slavering jaws by a hairs breadth. The fox twists and rolls, tries every trick, every last desperate one.

Paul had come to Hawaii, like many young haoles from the mainland, to party. Partying proved to be lucrative for him. By early October 1982 he had done well for himself in Hawaii, living in a country house with sprawling lawns that held back the jungle foliage…

Throw them up there but try to make it look tidy. Try to become a little bit paranoid, just enough that you slightly overestimate how much they think of you at all.

The serious writer looks back on a long and distinguished career as an herbologist.

What she didn't tell me was that her brother Carl got fried during an electrical storm.

Everyone else in the bar was looking everywhere else: it was as though they were alone while Journey played loudly all around. “Streetlights, people,” she sang. Time didn't move. What she must be like while driving, singing to herself with the windows fog

Useless.

Not long ago, Owen the Second showed her a skull. He kept it in a brown cardboard box in the top of the closet. "My first wife," he said, and sneered, his lip bunching up around a scar just under his nose.

...oh shit...

It was a lover’s dark. They had been talking for hours when daylight lost interest and had gone elsewhere for sport.

You're stupid drunk. And not feeling so good. You know you should stop doing this. But what else is there to do, especially since your brother went in? And now Roberto's gone to pick up his lady and left you alone, empty. Couldn't even drive you home. You don't…

‘Miguel! A pint of Guinness, please!' I might as well have asked for his mother's immortal soul. A smile as benign as a stiletto. But he served a clean and tidy pint.

The next thing we knew, the KGB started tailing us everywhere we went. They must have heard about Lenin’s Paintings, was all we could figure. Because, what if they were real? That night we went out to a pizza place where we saw the worst graffiti in t

"Hey, man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody who needs a haircut."

The museum’s catalog description changed much less than the painting over those years. He wasn’t curator-in-chief of catalog descriptions, however, that task went to a curator arriving by another door.