Quotes from Barry Gifford

We fool ourselvesinto thinkingwe're strongthen complainthe rest of our livescrippled bythe consequences.

The world is really wild at heart and weird on top.

In the picture, Ava Gardner's tousled black hair obscured her right eye, and her full, closed lips were pulled slightly to the right, resulting in something less than a smile. They looked as if they'd been smeared shut with red paint, though the photo was in black and white. It wasn't so much a fuck-me face as a I've-been-there-and-back look, the kind of expression you see only on the most expensive whores.

This is something an ordinary man can never know. You will enter the House of Dreams, Juanito, where you will live forever. Your mother and father and sisters and brothers, your grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, all you will greet in their dreams. And only you, among them, will be safe.

The only words worth repeating are from the Old Testament or Oscar Wilde.

We fool ourselves into thinking we're strong then complain the rest of our lives crippled by the consequences.

Romeo gritted his teeth and let the wind hit his face. Believe it, he told himself. Life with this woman will be without apologies.

She let him go.