Covering Your Tracks: Everybody notices you’re hogging all the pizza if you don’t eat the pizza crusts.

Making a Living: If you make your money by mugging people, you better account for the occasional victim who isn’t a pacifist.

Planning: If you leave banana peels lying around on the floor, sooner or later someone is going to end up flat on his ass.

Contingencies: You can’t pull a rabbit out of your hat unless you have first put a rabbit into your hat.

—Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

I’d never met any of these people before. We were there in the blistering heat of a New Jersey afternoon to sort out the affairs of our dysfunctional extended family. She was seventeen, the cousin I didn’t know I had. "Come meet your cousin Franklin!" the aunt I didn’t know called.

She staggered out of the bedroom with a bottle of aspirin and a can of beer, and stared at me blankly with dead fish eyes. "Go suck eggs," she said. She swallowed some aspirin, slammed the beer, and vanished back into the bedroom.

To this day, those are the only words she has ever spoken to me.

It surprises me that I’ve never been shot stabbed mugged beaten anally raped tortured maimed stalked threatened terrorized run over by a drunk driver pushed off a building taken hostage contracted cancer wrongly convicted mistaken for a pedophile cuckolded had my children kidnapped my home invaded my car stolen. I watch the news; what the hell is wrong with me?

—Rick Taylor

"The sea urchin quill is not arrogant at all."
—From Iron Chef

"Love is a contact sport." —FTD ad

"Whatever happened to the separation of church and hate?" —Dennis Miller

"Life itself should come with a money-back guarantee. If not completely satisfied, return unused portion for a full refund."
—Det. Munch (Richard Belzer), "Homicide"

"It’s a big universe. Some parts of it are talking monkey work."
—Archangel Gabriel (Christopher Walken), "The Prophesy"

Coffee, Coca-Cola, M&M’s, Gas • Beef Jerky, Big Gulps, Cigarettes, Snickers bars • Roast Beef, Candy Corn, Light Bulbs, Paste • French Fries, Applejacks, TV Guide, Bleach • Candles, Muscle ’Zines, Pepperoni, Beer • Incense, Hershey Bars, Skim Milk, Cheese • Paddle Ball, Motor Oil, Nail Clippers, Chaw • Ice Cream, Odor Eaters, Cortizone, Potato Chips • Sominex, Chlorine, Raquet Balls, Dice • Egg Beaters, Matzo, Slim Fast, Hamburger Buns

At the stairs a nose-pierced man demanded my three dollars. In return he gave me paper jewelry and welcomed me to the castle. In my ascendence flashing lights and volume pushed the limits of my senses. At the peak, my vision came in a black dress and tattooed arms. She moved like fury. Her hair, a black fire coursing down her back; her arms like that of a magus throwing spells both wicked and alluring. Her sisters danced around her like candles praying to a bonfire, and the images on the walls played movies of ancient Rome. …And I watched her with my eyes both hungry and furious. And I gobbled down my drink, thinking it was her. And when I finished with a mouth full of ice and cold water on my hands, she was gone.