American Gods

"We got maudlin. It was sweet. We got stupid.

It doesn't matter as much.""It matters to me."

we didn't call it that, we did not call it anything-for most of the last two years."

The tip of the cigarette glowed orange. "I'm still grateful.

"Puppy," she said. "Could you-do you think you could possibly get me a cigarette?”
<…>
There's a machine in the lobby."Shadow pulled on his jeans and a T-shirt and went, barefoot, into the lobby. The night clerk was a middle-aged man, reading a book by John Grisham. Shadow bought a pack of Virginia Slims from the machine. He asked the night clerk for a book of matches.

He would have known her in a crowd of a thousand, or of a hundred thousand.

"These are gods who have been forgotten, and now might as well be dead. They can be found only in dry histories. They are gone, all gone, but their names and their images remain with us."

Shadow knew that he did not have the personality to be a magician: he could not weave the stories that were so necessary for belief,

He ordered a cheese and meatball pizza, then he ran a bath, pouring all the motel's little plastic bottles of shampoo into the water, making it foam.He was too big to lie down in the bathtub, but he sat in it and luxuriated as best he could. Shadow had promised himself a bath when he got out of prison, and Shadow kept his promises.

"I got hijacked by a fat kid," said Shadow. "He says to tell you that you have been consigned to the dungheap of history while people like him ride in their limos down the superhighways of life. Something like that."


"Little snot," said Wednesday.