“I think of the rhythm of your body as you dash across a street, the angle of your face as you flick the ash off a cigarette, your body coiled the way the city is: Hungry. Disobedient. Defiant. You are the skyscraper built in haste and recklessness, rushing into the clouds, pieced together with bamboo, swaying in the wind.”

“This dream had come upon him in those nights in China. He had been lost in the beginning, alone and afraid. But he quickly found that his face and charm worked as well in China as it did everywhere else. Maybe even better. He told himself that he was an ordinary man, in the right place at the right time, that he would never again be poor or common. In the dead of night he wandered the alleys of Shanghai, which seemed to writhe and dart, always startling, always disturbing—in search of what, he didn’t know. The ugliness of the world offended him, but it had nothing to do with him. He took off to Spain or Thailand when the mood hit, telling himself he was free. But in his dreams he went to this other place, this ocean where he was immersed, choking, fighting, searching for myths.”