"The silence with which she greeted this was disbelief-flavored."
"The beer was interesting. Unexpectedly sour and undelicious, like drinkable dough. After just three or four sips, seldom-heard-from blood vessels in Walter's brain were pulsing disturbingly."
"He felt like a free-flying insect caught in a sticky web of family."
"To Katz, the exercise was an illustration of the general impossibility of the enterprise and the specific rancidness of prefabricated coolness..."
"Unlike Walter, who, in his culturally eager way, owned the entire Bright
Eyes oeuvre and had tiresomely extolled it at the Thai restaurant, Katz knew the band only by osmotic repute."
"He was beginning to dislike her for not being in the state he'd imagined he would find her in."