“But I loved George in part because he believed me; because if I stood in a cold, plain room and yelled FIRE, he would walk over and ask me why.”

“Sherrie would be there, and the last time I’d seen her at a social event she burst into tears when she saw me and ran out of the room. You’re upset, I’d yelled after her, meanly.”

“Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn't love me - I felt the wash of her love every day, pouring over me, but it was a different kind, siphoned from a different, and tamer, body of water. I was her darling daughter; Joseph was her it.”

“He said, I always thought the woman I’d marry would hit me easy, in a bolt of lightning, and there is not lightning there is not even thunder there is not even rain.”

“I peeled the skin off a grape in slippery little triangles, and I understood then that I would be undressing every item of food I could because my clothes would be staying on.”

“When we sleep together, he holds me like he loves me. I've noticed this: when it's the first date, and you fuck, the guy holds you much better than he does the next few times. The first date, you're sort of a stand-in for whomever he loved last, before he fully realizes you're not her, so you get all this nice residue emotion.”

“I knew if I ate anything of hers again, it would lkely tell me the same message: help me, I am not happy, help me -- like a message in a bottle sent in each meal to the eater, and I got it. I got the message.”