White seagulls, luminous in the new daylight, were circling high overhead against the blue of the clean sky, whistling and piping in the open, unecho… - Tim Powers

Gladhand sipped his whiskey. “Bourbon renewal, I called this,” he said, waving his glass. “One sip and the whole neighborhood looks better.”

In the early eighties, savvy Japanese had been scouring Melrose for old leather jackets and jukeboxes, and nervous tourists would drive by to look at the punks with green mohawks; now the funny hairstyles looked as if they’d been done at the Beverly Center. Like a government-subsidized avant-garde, Sullivan had thought as he’d tooled his old van down the crowded avenue, affluent disenfranchisement is just galvanic twitching in a dead frog’s leg.

Doesn't she read chicken entrails?"
"Oh! No, astrology."
"Same sort of thing.