- Mickey: Jesus, what a sheltered life I've led. I have book knowledge but you've really tasted life.
- Carolina: You've been round the world.
- Mickey: Yeah, but you've been around the block. You think you'll always be looking over your shoulder?
- Carolina: Everybody dies, you can't walk around thinking about it.
- Mickey: You're talking to a lifeguard.
- Mickey: [narrating] The kid makes fires. And not such little ones. He played hooky from summer school and even made fires on the beach where it's forbidden. What the hell does the kid see when he just stares into the flames? Is it the eternal power of the universe? The conversion of mass into energy? The Furies at work? Whatever his motive, it is not appreciated.
- [first lines]
- Mickey: [narrating] Coney Island, 1950's. The beach, the boardwalk. Once a luminous jewel, but growing relentlessly seedier as the tides roll in and out. Summers I work here on Bay 7. Comes the fall, I'm a student at New York University going for my Master's in European drama. I'm Mickey Rubin. Poetic by nature. I harbor dreams of being a writer. A writer of truly great plays, so I can one day surprise everyone and turn out a profound masterpiece.
- Mickey: [to the camera] Anyhow. Let me get to the story in which I am a character, so, be warned, as a poet, I use symbols, and as a budding dramatist, I relish melodrama and larger-than-life characters. Enter Carolina...