Michelle felt as if she had a stone inside her, something hard and unyielding that was making her feel sick. She hadn't known it was possible to feel this bad. She looked at Keith and felt sorry for him. When you chopped logs with the axe and they split open they smelt beautiful, like Christmas. But when you split someone's head open it smelt like an abattoir and quite overpowered the scent of the wild lilacs you'd cut and brought into the house only this morning, which was already in another life.

It seemed unlikely that Jackson would have more children. This was it - one girl in pink jeans and a T-shirt that was emblazoned with the message, 'So many boys, so little time'. Did the people who designed these T-shirts, did the people who made these T-shirts in size '8-10 yrs', ever stop to think that what they were doing might actually be immoral? Of course the people who made the T-shirts were probably themselves '8-10 yrs' in a sweatshop in the Philippines somewhere.
'Daddy?'
'Yep?'
'Can we light a candle for my hamster?'
'You should get a T-shirt,' Jackson said, ' "so many hamsters, so little time".'

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: "The first song I learned to play guitar and sing to at the same time was a Tom Waits song called 'Time,'" Samson says. "It was a pretty odd picture: I was about 13, my voice had just broken, and there I was in my parents' suburban home during the Christmas holidays singing one of the most world-weary songs ever."

She Left You, Move On: Although Samson's got more than his fair share of songs about girls he drunk-dialed at 4 A.M., he's forced himself past that. "There's a danger in relying for too long on the 'You-done-me-wrong/I-hate-my-parents/My-friends-are-annoying' themes that all novice songwriters write about. There's nothing wrong with those songs, I just think that after a certain point you should have a quota---you should only be able to have two songs per record like that. The other ones, you should challenge yourself to write about other things."

Dumbing It Down: "A huge element in music today that drives me nuts is all these well-educated, smart young people starting garage bands and pretending that they're stupid. One of the worst things about the world right now is people being afraid of sounding smart. I mean, I think Jackass is hilarious, but I don't want it to be the foundation of our entire culture."