The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (2004)

Nominated for the 2004 Philip K. Dick Award. All page numbers from the trade paperback first edition published by Ballantine Books

• Thursday is practically Friday and Friday is Friday.
  • Chapter 1 “I Wash Dishes for Scumbags” (p. 8)

• “MAY THE FORCE—”
  “—FEED YOUR HORSE!”
  • Chapter 4 “The Coyote Kings vs. the Whyte Wolves” (p. 31)

• We challenge ourselves to try at least four new bizarrities in every week’s groceries.
  • Chapter 9 “In Chinatown, Glittering Jackal Tantalizes Coyotes” (p. 61)

• Loopier than a snake in a garden hose.
  • Chapter 24 “A Glimpse into Wet, Dark Jewels” (p. 147)

• I’m not saying Hamza’s cheap, but if the only thing standing between our solar system and a fleet of intergalactic enslavers was Hamza’s wallet crunched inside his fist, we’d all be drilling methane wells on Pluto right now.
  • Chapter 28 “Glass Slippers or the Glass Slip?” (p. 160)

• There’s only two types of people in the world, Ye, weird and boring.
  • Chapter 28 “Glass Slippers or the Glass Slip?” (p. 161)

• People are so lazy, they want everything to be simple, but nothing is simple. Nothing.
  • Chapter 31 “Saturday Morning Mission” (p. 173)

• People get accustomed to evil like they get accustomed to smog or noise or graffiti! But it doesn’t change what it is.
  • Chapter 34 “On Good, Evil, Invisible Hands, and the Wind” (p. 192)

• They’re everything that’s wrong in this instant-coffee and microwave age. ‘I want it now.’ There used to be that romantic image of going off to Tibet and climbing the mountain to speak to the wise man. And when you got to the top, he could tell you the truths of the universe. Now people wanna take a helicopter to the top—or e-mail him!
  • Chapter 34 “On Good, Evil, Invisible Hands, and the Wind” (p. 193)

• Sky’s so big and dazzling and buzzing and crackling and moaning with all that black silence, I feel like my skull is open to space, all that way-beyond soaking directly into my brain. Stars and stars and stars...some of em planets, some of em satellites. All of em out there, alone, untouchable.
  • Chapter 39 “Telescope to Avalon” (p. 226)

• All organic. No chemicals here, no way. The red globe grapes, $8.99 a kilo. I take a pawful, pop em, one at a time. They crunch. This is my only wine. This is my Sunday sacrament...sweet and honest and decent. No lies from chemists, or from priests.
  You wanna heal your soul? Step one is healing your soil.
  • Chapter 44 “The Long, Long Drive to Nowhere” (p. 250)

• It is better not to know and to know that one does not know, than presumptuously to attribute some random meaning to symbols.
  • Chapter 46 “Prelude to the Negative Confession” (p. 260)

• Good people get hurt—bad people get ahead, get rich, get your girl. Good doesn’t triumph over evil. So, do I believe in God?
  He doesn’t believe in me.
  • Chapter 56 “At Last, the Box, Explained” (p. 319)

• Good triumphs over evil when it’s better organized, better trained, better armed, sneakier, and gutsier than evil.
  • Chapter 56 “At Last, the Box, Explained” (p. 320)

• How odd—disturbing, in fact—to hear someone address a god with such profane irreverence. But I suppose that the history of mythology is nothing if not proof that celestials are the instructors of man’s worst sins.
  • Chapter 77 “The Two Sovereigns” (p. 438)

• Nothing like hope to doom you.
  • Chapter 79 “The Badlands” (p. 457)

• It’s a special kind of hugging, the kind where deep down you’re facing the unspoken fact that this’s the last time you’re gonna hold somebody, and so you make your cells hold on, make em drink in somebody’s scent and texture, so you can keep em with you after the world has taken em away.
  • Chapter 90 “Unfurl the Sails, Speak the Names of the Stars” (p. 514)

• I know I’m not the same man I was eight days ago.
  And I know it’s time to find out who I am.
  • Prologue (p. 524; closing words)

• That uncountable myths and legends and ecclesiastical operas and dirges have at their core, if not in their trappings, near identical mechanisms, performances, and outcomes is proof most solid of the centrality of the panhuman subconscious—or superconscious—experience of the myriad and manifold wonders and terrors of the cosmos.
  • Appendix (p. 525)

• Much has been dissected from among the myths to explore the significance of the mortal endurance and experience of pain. Pain, we are told, purifies the body, expands the mind, prepares the novice for the tests of life and therefore for initiation into the clan, the sect, the tribe, the gang, the squadron, the priesthood, the academy, the coven, or the board. It is clear that such suppositions regarding physical or emotional pain are true; little more need be said on such matters.
  • Appendix (p. 527)

• The history of human development can neatly be divided into two epochs: (1) the feminine, yin, agro-sedentary pastoral idyll of the old-to-late Paleolithic Mother-Earth-Goddess religions and (2) the masculine, yang, technomobile hunter-gatherer-warrior field effect of urbanized, late-Neolithic-to-Modern Father-Sky-God religions.
  • Appendix (p. 527)

From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (2007)

Nominated for the 2007 Philip K. Dick Award. All page numbers from the trade paperback first edition published by Ballantine Books

• “You know, in my experience,” said Kareem, caging his fingers and drawing out his words, “the jokers...who talk the most about ‘playing the race card’...are the people who own all the diamonds...who’ve picked up the clubs...to beat down the spades...because they’ve got no heart.”
  • Chapter 1 “Operation: Cooperation!” (p. 14)

• Paranoia speaks to a deeper drive than fear. Paranoia is a defiant charge to a cold, unfeeling cosmos: “Hear me! I exist! I’m important!” Because after all, if someone is actually orchestrating the chaos of the universe against you personally, then you do matter. When no one seems to care anymore, at least “enemies” give you the comforting illusion that you count.
  • Chapter 1 “Operation: Cooperation!” (p. 31)

• “Babydoll, when ain’nuthin funny, eat what’s sweet. That’s my philosophy.”
  • Chapter 2 “Facing the Ultimate Archenemy” (p. 45)

• “What do I ‘feel’?” he sneered...Did you actually ask me what I ‘feel’? I ‘feel’ I’m surrounded by morons!”
  • Chapter 2 “Facing the Ultimate Archenemy” (p. 51)

• As Carl Jung said, avoidance of legitimate suffering is the root of all mental illness. And one truth you must suffer is that everything and everyone you love will eventually die.
  Even gods.
  • Chapter 2 “Facing the Ultimate Archenemy” (p. 57)

• Even if victory were possible, it still couldn’t provide meaning or genuine happiness, because saying “I want to be the best” is simply the polite way of saying “I want everyone else to be worse.”
  • Chapter 2 “Facing the Ultimate Archenemy” (p. 58)

• I never sought glory. Basic respect would suffice.
  • Chapter 3 “Clash of the Icons” (p. 69)

• The id isn’t satisfied with “enough,” because enough is never enough. The id always needs more, or specifically, more than anybody else. So “enough” becomes “more than” which becomes “all.” And even then, the id fears that all can be taken away; therefore crushing the capacity of others to resist becomes paramount.
  • Chapter 3 “Clash of the Icons” (p. 75)

• It’s inevitable that worship decays into contempt, because worship is ultimately about being trapped, being a slave.
  • Chapter 4 “Iconoclastic means “I Can!”” (pp. 84-85)

• Believing in anyone more than you believe in yourself causes you to suspend your own judgment, which leads to counter-self-actualization, or self-deactivation.
  • Chapter 4 “Iconoclastic means “I Can!”” (p. 106)

• Take responsibility for your own happiness, rather than claiming telepathy you don’t have (unless you are telepathic) or ascribing to others ugly thoughts you can’t verify, and aiming endless, nonspecific blame for your mediocrity at the Trilateral Commission, “the media,” SKULL, the RAND Corporation, the long-disbanded Treemasons, the MAN, the Black Helicopter Legion, or the perennial favorite of paranoiacs, “Them.”
  • Chapter 5 “Limited Series” (p. 151)

• The self-delusion that mysterious forces and persons unknown are conspiring against us is, surprisingly, a comforting belief, because it means we’re significant enough in this anarchic world to warrant someone’s enmity. That delusion saves us from the far more difficult to accept reality: that we’re not that important to anyone. That the universe just isn’t “into” us.
  Paranoia is the emotive-psychestructure’s response to feeling ignored, unloved, or forgotten in an existence filled with random acts of destructive indifference emphasizing the inherent futility of life and struggle. If you’re ever to achieve serenity, ultimately you must accept that in such a vast cosmos, you simply don’t matter very much.
  • Chapter 6 “Up is Down: The Path Inside is Outside” (p. 185)

• Lack of verifiability was a paranoiac’s playground paradise.
  • Chapter 7 “Who Are You, Really? Secret Origins and Secret Shames” (p. 192)

• All of them cite that toxic spew, even though there’s not a syllable of supporting evidence. Because the controversy itself became news. Save a country, save a world, save a child—it doesn’t matter. You don’t need proof or even evidence to burn down a man’s soul. All you need is accusation.
  • Chapter 8 “Unrequited Hate” (p. 239)

• When dysfunctional self-distraction devolves into delusional self-destruction, neurosis turns into psychosis.
  • Chapter 8 “Unrequited Hate” (p. 251)

• We spent too much damn time getting down. Now it’s time to get up.
  • Chapter 9 “Paranoia: It Can Destroy Ya” (p. 258)

• The two former lovers finally looked at each other, their faces crawling with the crabs of conflicting emotion.
  • Chapter 9 “Paranoia: It Can Destroy Ya” (p. 283)

• Hnossi glowered at her daughter, a look cold enough to freeze sunshine and shatter it on the pavement.
  • Chapter 10 “The Battle of All Mothers, the Mother of All Battles” (p. 298)

• That diabolical deviant is smarter than he smells.
  • Chapter 11 “Self-Distraction is Self-Destruction” (p. 323)

• When people are suffering, they usually hurt the people closest to them, because those are the only ones left around.
  • Chapter 11 “Self-Distraction is Self-Destruction” (p. 325)