Memory in the mind of man can adapt to the worst conditions. I’ll give you an example, an analogy of sorts: Each night I sop rags with beer and lay them out in careful strips....

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

The walls were chipped and needed paint. The windows were mostly okay but one pane was blocked with cardboard. There were fleas the exterminator couldn’t kill and rats that scrabbled in the walls and mice...

All of us have secrets in our lives. We’re keepers or keptfrom, players or played. Secrets and cockroaches — that’s what will be left at the end of it all.

Being mad at a drug addict for doing what drug addicts do, is like being mad at a shark for doing what sharks do, or being mad at a cockroach for doing what cockroaches do.

You don’t scare a man who sees people as cockroaches.

He assaulted the man with a psychic wave. “You are a cockroach.” In his inebraited state, Cody had no resistance at all to a vampire mind control. He fell to the floor and scurried around...

Your self-esteem is a notch below Kafka.