“I’m wearing black leggings and a loose top festooned with a Menger sponge of empty pockets stitched out of smaller pockets and smaller still, almost down to the limits of visibility—woven in freefall by hordes of tiny otaku spiders, I’m told, their genes programmed by an obsessive-compulsive sartorial topologist.”

“I’m probably just as good a mother as the next repressed, obsessive-compulsive paranoiac.”

“It’s either I’m going to wear the black shirt, otherwise, I’m going to wear pyjamas.”

“If I’m at a party where I’m not enjoying myself, I will put some cookies in my jacket pocket and leave without saying good-bye.”

“I’m still wearing my shoes, I realize. And I’m still wearing this fucking suit. I didn’t even take it off for the flight—I must be turning into a manager or something. I have a sudden urge to wash compulsively. At least the tie’s snaked off to wherever the horrid things live when they’re not throttling their victims.”

“The traveller with empty pockets will sing in the thief's face.”
Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator.

“Pyramiding instructions appear on dollar bills. Add smaller and smaller amounts on the way up. Keep your eye open at the top.”

“If I go up to Harlem or down to Sixth Street, and I’m not dressed up or I’m not wearing my jewelry, then the people feel I’m talking down to them.”

“Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket.”

“Empty pockets never held anyone back…it's only empty heads and empty hearts that do it.”