The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

by Michael Chabon

Those who make their living flirting with catastrophe develop a faculty of pessimistic imagination, of anticipating the worst, that is often all but indistinguishable from clairvoyance.

He felt—it was not an articulated feeling, but it was powerful and, in its way, a comfort to him—that he could justify his own liberty only to the degree that he employed it to earn the freedom of the family he had left behind.

“That means you think it could be a hit,” said Sammy. “It’s very difficult to fail at pornography,”

their show of ordinary mute male farewell, the handshake, the pat on the shoulder, carefully tailoring and modulating their behavior though there was no one at all watching, so finely attuned to the danger of what they might lose that they could not permit themselves to notice what they had.