It’s how I fill the time when nothing’s happening. Thinking too much, flirting with melancholy.

The pig winks and rolls in the bog. He kicks his legs up and his trotters clack together. The sun is low over the neighbourhood. There is the smell of oncoming night, of pollen settling, the sounds of kids fighting bath time. Lester comes down, waving his hands.Don't drown the pig, Fish. We're saving him for Christmas! We're gonna eat him.No!I'll drink to that, says the pig.Lester stands there. He looks at Fish. He looks at the porker. He peeps over the fence. The pig. The flamin' pig. The pig has just spoken. It's no language that he can understand, but there's no doubt. He feels a little crook, like maybe he should go over to that tree and puke. I like him, Lestah.He talks?Yep.Oh, my gawd.Lester looks at his retarded son again and once more at the pig.The pig talks.I likes him.Yeah, I bet.The pig snuffles, lets off a few syllables: aka sembon itwa. It's tongues, that's what it is. A blasted Pentecostal pig.And you understand him?Yep. I likes him.Always the miracles you don't need. It's not a simple world, Fish. It's not.

And the sun on the wall of her room, the block of sun with all the tiny flying things in it. When she was little she thought they were the souls of dead insects, still buzzing in the light.

She was still glad she looked like Scully. He wasn't pretty either, but pretty people weren't the kind you need. Pretty people saw themselves in the mirror and were either too happy or too sad. People like Billie just shrugged and didn't care. She didn't want to turn into anyone pretty. Anyway, she had scars now, you only had to look.

It's the pointless things that give your life meaning. Friendship, Compassion, Art, Love. All of them are pointless. But, they're what keeps life from being meaningless.

Old Scully, who according to Jennifer, hadn't the imagination to think the worst. Something she said once, as though neurosis was an artform.

He was free and unencumbered. Which is to say alone and unemployed.

...the past is in us, and not behind us. Things are never over.

There's things that have no finish, Scully, no ending to speak of. There's no justice to it, but that's the God's truth. The only end some things have is the end you give em.

So you've given away the old good and evil? asked Rose, amazed at all this rare talk from Quick.No. No. I'll stay a cop. But it's not us and them anymore. It's us and us and us. It's always us. That's what they never tell you. Geez, Rose, I just want to do right. But there's no monsters, only people like us. Funny, but it hurts.

The whole underneath of Paris was an ant nest, Metro tunnels, sewer shafts, catacombs, mines, cemeteries. She'd been down in the city of bones where skulls and femurs rose in yellowing walls. Right down there, win the square before them. through a dinky little entrance, were the Roman ruins like honeycomb. The trains went under the river. There were tunnels people had forgotten about. It was a wonder Paris stood up at all. The bit you saw was only half of it. Her skin burned, thinking of it. The Hunchback knew. Up here in the tower of Notre Dame he saw how it was. Now and then, with the bells rattling his bones, he saw it like God saw it -- inside, outside, above and under -- just for a moment. The rest of the time he went back to hurting and waiting like Scully out there crying in the wind.

I have never been a violent man. Just a little creepy, it seems.

And though I've lived to be an old man with my very own share of happiness for all the mess I made, I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living.

There are no wastelands in our landscape quite like those we've created ourselves.