Flirtation, so effortlessly accomplished. Mention of the train had done it. Train unspecified; they both knew which. They’d ridden together and now s… - Jonathan Lethem

Like other names I censored lately, this was a vote against invoking monsters, against etching their reality into the air.

You remind me of myself, once upon a time. We’re not really that different even now. We chafe at our bits—but you’re stubborn, inflexible. Stupid, finally. I’ve learned to compromise. In negotiation lies power, viability. Your inflexibility has rendered you marginal.

In fact, I hated Loomis — let me count the ways. His imprecision and laziness maddened my compulsive instincts — his patchiness, the way even his speech was riddled with drop-outs and glitches like a worn cassette, the way his leaden senses refused the world, his attention like a pinball rolling past unlit blinkers and frozen flippers into the hole again and again: game over . He was permanently impressed by the most irrelevant banalities and impossible to impress with real novelty, meaning, or conflict.