- Rebecca Logan: My God, look at the state of you.
- Ted Wallace: If you're here, Rebecca, who's ruling over Narnia?
- Ted Wallace: Feeling like twelve types of dick, I was suddenly struck by an image of David sprouting wings and flying away. Certainly that would be a miracle worth investigating.
- [first lines]
- Ted Wallace: [narrating] T. S. Eliot said that the purpose of literature was to turn blood into ink. Well, I tried that. I published five collections of poetry in eight years and I bled like a hemophiliac. Then, somewhere along the way, the blood finally clotted. Over time, the scab became a scar, and now I can scarcely feel the wound. All the arteries and veins are dried out. I no longer turn blood into ink. These days, I turn whiskey into journalism. I haven't written a poem since 1987.