“Imagine if you took a tiny piece of a diamond and put it in some meat. Imagine it irritating the meat, agitating it, inflaming it. Imagine if the meat rose around to coat it with layers of itself, to obfuscate and obscure it. Imagine if Sinbad’s slabs of meat swallowed the diamond and became something else. Became diamond-and-meat. Became organic crystal. Became other.”

I have been captivated by this collection but this moment— and this story— are SO fun. This line and all the build up to it with the stories and the uncertain reliability of the narrator is everything.

(Transcribed from audio so might not be perfectly accurate)