“Gender mattered a whole lot less to Shakespeare than it seems to matter to us.”

“That was when Angel Wells became a fiction writer, whether he knew it or not. That's when he learned how to make the make-believe matter to him more than real life mattered to him; that's when he learned how to paint a picture that was not real and never would be real, but in order to be believed at all- even on a sunny Indian summer day- it had to be better made and seem more real than real; it had to sound at least possible.”

“The hardest thing to accept about the passage of time is that the people who mattered most to us are all wrapped up in parenthesis”

“What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.”

“What the hell is the matter with Eddie? Ruth was thinking. If he doesn't stop staring at me, I'm going to drive off the road!Hannah had also noticed that Eddie was staring at Ruth. What the hell is the matter with Eddie? Hannah was thinking. Since when did the asshole take an interest in a younger woman?”

“That’s what I love about boys,” Marion told him. “No matter what, you just go about your business.”

“It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Bevore you can write anything, you have to notice something.”