Panorama City

When JB talked about being a conduit, he talked about being a conduit for God, but he was in fact a conduit for Scott Valdez.

I’m not sure how it came to be, the reason is probably attached to the great chain of unintended consequences, but Aunt Liz’s calling in life turned out to be preventing me from pursuing mine.

Later, Dr. Rosenkleig told me that on the roof I had experienced the loss of the father all over again, a so-called variation on a theme. He suggested that discussing my father’s death through the lens of Paul’s disappearance might help us dig deeper, which made no sense to me, I couldn’t see what one had to do with the other, but then again Dr. Ro

The police had questions for me, which I answered truthfully, which is a fine strategy for talking to police, though it can confuse them.

Oppen, my friend, listen, it’s the way of the world, he who laughs last must first endure the laughter of others. Then they took him away.

Paul explained that nonthinkers, those who weren’t going to move history forward in any way, those who preferred to let others do their thinking for them, loved the term slippery slope, he explained that slippery slope was a favorite term among those who wanted to erase distinctions between discrete things in order to better control those around th

The joke was: What are the three parts of an old-fashioned stove? Answer: Lifter, leg, and poker. Your grandfather and his guests, they had been drinking, all of them laughed hard and I didn’t understand why until I was in the so-called heat of the moment with the woman who would become your mother, and so that’s why I was suddenly consumed with gi

The measure of a man’s thinking is in how those words are transformed, the measure of a man’s thinking is what he does with other people’s words, they must penetrate him deeply, they must penetrate him to the core, they must filter through his piled-up experiences and opinions, and they must return transformed.

I wondered why Aunt Liz had set me up with a job working at the fast-food place, I wondered why she hadn’t set me up with a job as a therapist. I have always been an amateur at talking and listening, but how hard could it be to turn professional, there wasn’t any equipment involved.