The Thought Gang

• Opening the fridge door, I found a rat eating the cheese. My dealings with rodents, particularly those tagged verminous, have been few, but generally the pattern has been one of man, the boss, the caretaker of creation, the namer, appearing and the lower orders hitting the road.
  • Page 63.

• Methods Used
  1. Marxist: You decide you're the vanguard of the proletariat and then you can do whatever you want because history will back you up.
  2. Stoic: Stay very calm.
  3. Positivist: Yes, I'm positive I want to rob this bank.
  • Page 97.

• Jocelyne clicked her barbell on her teeth. I was watching her closely for signs of collapsing romance. Her tongue was pierced, (a process, she had elaborated, that had taken two weeks of painful healing) and it put me in mind of the tongue-piercing ceremony endured on October 28, 709 AD by the principal wife of Shield Jaguar, Blood Lord of Yaxchilan (Lintel 24); i.e. to my eye, pointless, but if it's good enough for the Mayans ...

"Why did you do it?"

"To punish my tongue, for saying things it shouldn't have." Click.

"But surely it was only obeying orders?"

"It has to learn to be warier of its mistress. And it's also a symbol." Click.

"What of?"

"That changes from day to day. It's a multi-purpose symbol."

• See wikipedia on Yaxchilan.

• Best of things symbolised by Jocelyne's barbell:
  "It's a symbol of the need for symbols."
  "How life shrapnels us."
  "Assistant bank manageress on the outside, primitive on the inside."
  "Of whatever I feel like."
  "That you can do stupid things at any point in your life."
  • Page 204.

• You've got to try everything once, except those things you don't like, or that involve a lot of effort and getting up early.
  • Page 205.

• The impossible lives next door to the possible; people ring its door bell by accident all the time.
  • Page 226.