6
" Lilah did little more than sleep and eat and cry, which to me was the most fascinating thing in the entire universe. Why did she cry? When did she sleep? What made her eat a lot one day and little the next? Was she changing with time? I did what any obsessed person would do in such a case: I recorded data, plotted it, calculated statistical correlations. First I just wrote on scraps of paper and made charts on graph paper, but I very quickly became more sophisticated. I wrote computer software to make a beautifully colored plot showing times when Diane fed Lilah, in black; when I fed her, in blue (expressed mother's milk, if you must know); Lilah's fussy times, in angry red; her happy times, in green. I calculated patterns in sleeping times, eating times, length of sleep, amounts eaten.
Then, I did what any obsessed person would do these days; I put it all on the Web. "
― Mike Brown , How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming
9
" I don't know what I expected – no
maybe I do, Al Pacino from Scarface-
but this drug dealer is more like Al Pacino
at the beginning of The Godfather
reasonably bemused, untouched by his
criminal world, sitting with Diane Keaton
whispering about Luca Brazzi, not yet asleep
with the fishes, or like Al Pacino
from Glengarry Glen Ross, although actually,
now that I think about it, he's not
like Al Pacino at all but more like
Kevin Spacey from that film, and who's
ever been afraid of Kevin Spacey? "
― Jess Walter , The Financial Lives of the Poets