“ In the wasteland of metro Boston, at thirteen, fourteen, his big dream had been of a gun to his own head, putting him out of his misery—a misery that by sophomore year of college was indistinguishable… Garth Risk Hallberg
“ And she learned that you couldn’t stockpile anything that mattered, really. Feelings, people, songs, sex, fireworks: they existed only in time, and when it was over, so were they. Garth Risk Hallberg
“ The sky was low and broody, but from here, near the treeline, you could see the forest rolling down into the valley, the lake tucked away like a pocket mirror. Garth Risk Hallberg
“ For paranoia was Zig's late style: How else but through networks and conspiracies could he fashion a target big enough for his outrage? Richard usually found paranoia uninteresting, insofar as it swep… Garth Risk Hallberg
“ No amount of art, even of the Great American variety, can elevate you above, or insulate you from, the divisions, the cataclysms, of ordinary life. Garth Risk Hallberg
“ William, an artist is someone who combines a desperate need to be understood with the fiercest love of privacy- Garth Risk Hallberg
“ And as he reached for William's leg, the way a small child will reach for its mother's, there welled up through a small hole in the bottom of Mercer's soul a relief surpassing any he'd ever known in w… Garth Risk Hallberg
“ Three’s all you need to change the world. Look at the Bolsheviks, or the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Garth Risk Hallberg
“ Everything's always changing, Charlie. We become who we are. The mask melts into the face. Garth Risk Hallberg
“ Some people think the real them is whoever they are when they're not around other people. Garth Risk Hallberg
“ There is no such thing as a perfect phrase, or a private language, and . . . time only runs the one way. Garth Risk Hallberg
“ But no, what interested him, psychologically speaking, was the sense of continuity itself, the mind's insistence that this was the same Regan he'd known when he was eight; had anything befallen her, t… Garth Risk Hallberg
“ But what if time worked the other way around?What if what his adolescent self had felt then was the ghost of his present one, sitting here on a sagging bench, beckoning him into his future? Garth Risk Hallberg
“ As if it were possible for one person to care about another and still treat him or her like this. Garth Risk Hallberg
“ One day, he and William had been speeding toward each other; the next, careening away. But why? Garth Risk Hallberg
“ I couldn't understand; cheating was the one thing I'd told her all those years ago would be unforgivable. She knew, she said, but that was part of what had been confusing her, that I would even have t… Garth Risk Hallberg
