“I flipped through their visions,left my number in their sleep.But no one called back.I called all night,called for years,called till their lids began to ring,ten, twenty, two hundred times,and then they went blind on my dreams.Now their eyes don't open.No one picks up the phone.”

“I'll call you," he repeated."If you call me, I won't pick up the phone.""You will wait by the phone for my call, and when it rings, you will pick it up and you will speak to me in a civil manner. If you don't know how, ask someone.”

“I Ain't Got No Quarrel With The VietCong...No VietCong Ever Called Me Nigger.”

“The daughter wants to turn the past on its back like a turtle or a roach, leaving those legs walking futilely through air cheering on those starved and paralyzed years. The mother put her makeup on, got ready for work, while cigarettes burned down, one by one in the chipped, red ashtray. The daughter stood beside the blaring alarm clock and shook the mother's sleeping body who worked sixteen hours a day and called the daughter and son from pay phones between jobs. When the mother found the daughter on the lawn of the mental hospital playing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star on her harmonica the mother couldn't believe it, because she was gone the years that led to it. When they finally came together, they came together as guilty mother and guilty daughter and found there was nothing there to trade.”

“I remember my first cell phone number still. I may call it and ask to speak to myself from eight years ago. If they say I have the wrong number I’ll tell them, No, right number, wrong time.”

“He’s called you, like, four times in the past week. And seriously, you should be embarrassed. I’ve never met anyone who has as much phone sex as you two.” My eyes narrowed on her. “How do you know about the phone sex?” “Duh. I pick up the phone and listen.” I gaped at her.”

“...if I were to ever have enough material or the philosophical mind to write a book about what a good life ought to be, my thesis would be simply this: A good life is one that has managed to turn anxiety into hope, and fear into success. And that is what I call total virtue.”