Quicksilver

by Dean Koontz

“Quinn, if you’re going to be running people down on a regular basis, you’d be wise to invest in a larger, sturdier vehicle.”

But Grandpa has something of a past. Don’t you, Grandpa?” “Something of,” he acknowledged. “Here and there, this and that. You know how it is.” “He was something, then something else, then another something that we don’t talk about. Then when he was thirty-six, twenty-three years ago—I wouldn’t be born for another five years—he became a contractor.”

The busy workers appeared in fact to be in a state of such utter perplexity at our frantic intrusion that you might say they were nonplussed, even if you could expect to be criticized for using that word.

“The kind of people who, if they catch you trespassing, cut your feet off with a reciprocating saw and urinate on you while you bleed to death.”

“You’re a question monkey, aren’t you, dear?

I need to remember this one for the kid.

“My imaginary friends,” she said, “are the children of the children of Swedish immigrants, so they’re third generation and thoroughly Americanized.”

“You mean he suspects you were once something, then something else, and then another something that you don’t talk about.”

Writing novels seems like a glamorous and exciting occupation, although in reality I suspect that it’s a lot less glamorous than professional wrestling and only marginally more exciting than being a librarian.