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Derfor er det et problem, hvis staten trods sit voldsmonopol ikke lever op til sin forpligtelse til at beskytte borgere, når de ytrer sig inden for lovens rammer. Eller hvis staten ikke tager sin forpligtelse alvorligt og i stedet lægger pres på borgerne for at få dem til at opgive deres rettigheder som borgere i et frit land, når nogen reagerer med vold og trusler på ytringer, der har krav på lovens beskyttelse.

Der var frivillig selvkritik hver anden uge. Jeg deltog altid. Jeg var en god fange. Jeg har altid forsøgt at overholde reglerne. Jeg har forbedret mig. Jeg har aldrig spist menneskekød.

Men vi fik intet at spise, af og til følte jeg, mens jeg stod på ladet kilet ind mellem de andre fanger, på mine ribben og mine hofteknogler, der endelig ragede langt frem fra kroppen, som jeg altid havde ønsket mig.

Jeg tænkte på Christopher og på at jeg altid havde syntes jeg var for fed, og jeg var lykkelig over endelig seriously at tabe i vægt. Det var jo aldrig lykkedes for mig; måske havde jeg før i tiden vært i stand til at tabe en, to kilo, men nu havde jeg da mindst tabt ti eller tolv. Heldigvis.

Se bare ud på gaden. Ser De det ikke? Snart er Shahen væk, måske er han allerede væk. I dette land begynder der nu en ny tidsalder, uden for Amerikas rækkevidde. Der findes kun én sag, der kan stå imod, kun én, der er stærk nok: Islam. Alle andre vil gå til grunde. Alle andre vil drukne i et skumhav af cornflakes og Pepsi Cola og påtaget høflighed.

Senere så jeg en politibetjent knæle og kysse fødderne af en præst, og jeg fik pludselig kvalme og måtte næsten brække mig.

I likhet med folk flest, antagelig, hoppet jeg over kapitlene om de religiøse pliktene, om islams søyler og fasten, for å komme rett til kapittel 7: «Hvorfor polygami?»

Hele den intellektuelle debatten i det 20. århundre kan oppsummeres som en strid mellom kommunismen, som vi kan kalle hardcore-versjonen av humanismen, og det liberale demokratiet, som er den softe varianten; det var tross alt veldig innskrenkende. Det religiøses tilbakekomst, som vi bare så vidt har begynt å snakke om, var noe jeg for min egen del visste var uunngåelig allerede da jeg var femten år, tror jeg.

Why do you think they're crazy? asked John Grady.
Why do I think or why are they?
Why are they.
They're just made that way. A horse has got two brains. He dont see the same thing out of both eyes at once. He's got a eye for each side.
So does a fish, said Troy.
Well. That's true.
So does a fish have two brains?
I dont know. I dont know that a fish has got any brains at all to speak of.
Maybe a fish just aint smart enough to be crazy.
I think you got a point. A horse aint really all that dumb.
They're too dumb to shade up and a dumb-assed cow will do that.
So will a fish. Or a rattlesnake for that matter.
You think a snake is dumber than a fish?
Hell, Troy, I dont know. Who in the hell would know such a thing? They're both dumbern hell in my opinion.

“Well that's what Bill is into”, Richard told Miss Frost. “Crushes on the wrong people.”
“That's quite a category”, Miss Frost said; she was all the while smiling beatutifully at me. “I'm going to start you out slowly — trust me on this one , William. You can't rush into crushes on the wrong people.”
“Just what do you have in mind?” Richard Abbott asked her. “Are we talking Romeo and Juliet here?”
“The problems between the Montagues and the Capulets were not Romeo's and Juliet's problems,” Miss Frost said. “Romeo and Juliet were the right people for each other; it was their families that were fucked up.”
“I see,” Richard said — the “fucked up” remark shocked him and me. (It seemed so unlike a librarian.)

The eyes dried and wrinkled and the cords they hung by dried and the world vanished and he slept at last and dreamt of the country through which he'd ridden in his campaigns in the mountains and the brightly colored birds thereof and the wildflowers and he dreamt of young girls barefoot by the roadside in the mountain towns whose own eyes were pools of promise deep and dark as the world itself and over all the taut blue sky of Mexico where the future of man stood dress rehearsal daily and the figure of death in his paper skull and suit painted bones strode up and back before the footlights in high declamation.

You reckon the horses know where we're at? Boyd said.
What do you mean?
He looked up from the fire. I mean do you reckon they know where we're at.
What the hell kind of question is that?
Well. I reckon it's a question about horses and what they know about where they're at.

East and to the south there was water on the flats and two sandhill cranes stood tethered to their reflections out there in the last of the day's light like statues of such birds in some waste of a garden where calamity had swept all else away.

This needle fever had a psychological life of its own. What better way to be at once the fucker and the fucked, the subject and the object, the scientist and the experiment, trying to set the spirit free by enslaving the body? What other form of self-division was more expressive than the androgynous embrace of an injection, one arm locking the needle into the other, enlisting pain into the service of pleasure and forcing pleasure back into the service of pain?

Every night, there's always some chick out there who'll yell, “We love you, Michael,” or “I love you, Boz,” and once in a while I'll get one of those too. But usually, with me, because of the “musicians' musician” thing and various other disqualifiers, it'll be some poor dude yelling “DONNNNALD” in a crazy, tortured voice.

Mike [McDonald], Boz [Scaggs] and I are pretty old now and so is most of our audience. Tonight, though, the crowd looked so geriatric I was tempted to start calling out bingo numbers.

Mainly, I've been lying in bed and thinking about cigarettes. I quit a couple of months ago and I do feel better except that it's like I'm always waiting for some square-ass civilian to finish a boring dinner story so I can go outside and have a cigarette, and that square-ass civilian is now me.

There are countless definitions of the word “hipster”. In the title of this book, I'm using it to refer to artists whose origins lie outside the mainstream or creatively exploit material from the margin or who, merely because they live in a freaky space, have enough distance to see some truth.

The Internet, which at first seemed so fascinating, appears to be evolving into something worse than TV, but we'll see.