“A thirteen-year-old girl stands in a landscape made almost entirely of garbage, screaming at a common domestic sow.”
“It having become apparent that I should write a novel, my next concern became which novel I should write.”
“So I've sailed the seas and come to—No. I’ve sailed no seas. I’ve driven south down I-95, driven south for days, until 95 stopped and I was back in Miami. No country for old women. I’m not old yet, but my heart is sick with old desire, and I’m back in this place of sensual music to see if it’s time to retire from love.”
“An American CEO, who had previously spent six years in Vietnam, eventually decided to establish the world’s largest automobile factory along the border of the Balou Mountains, about sixty kilometers from the Explosion county seat. What ended up eventually influencing his decision was not only Kong Mingliang’s wining and dining, but also his amazingly fast construction process, which was a result of Mingliang’s having bribed the people of Explosion.”