if poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science-fiction writers are its court jesters. - William Gibson

The U.S. hundred is the international currency of bad shit, Hollis, and by the same token the number one target of counterfeiters.

Another example — maybe a better one, in a way — was when it was confirmed that Michael Jackson was going to marry Elvis Presley's daughter. A good friend of mine in the States faxed me, and he simply said, "This makes your job more difficult." And I knew exactly what he meant. Because something — a scenario — that seemed to belong to the universe of the late Terry Southern, was suddenly real. It's that truth-is-stranger-than-fiction factor keeps getting jacked up on us on a fairly regular, maybe even exponential, basis. I think that's something peculiar to our time. I don't think our grandparents had to live with that.

His teeth sang in their individual sockets like tuning forks, each one pitch-perfect and clear as ethanol.