“We're all getting too smart. Our brains are just getting bigger and bigger, and the world dries up and dies when there's too much thought and not enough heart.”

“Listen. Look. Desire is a house. Desire needs closed space. Desire runs out of doors or windows, or slats or pinpricks, it can’t fit under the sky, too large. Close the doors. Close the windows. As soon as you laugh from nerves or make a joke or say something just to say something or get all involved with the bushes, then you blow open a window in your house of desire and it can’t heat up as well. Cold draft comes in.”

“Many kids, it seemed, would find out that their parents were flawed, messed-up people later in life, and I didn't appreciate getting to know it all so strong and early.”

“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've noticed this: when it's the first date, and you fuck, the guy hold you much better than he does the next few times. The first date, you're sort of the stand-in for whomever he loved last, before he fully realizes that you're not her, and so you get all this nice residue emotion. I felt cherished, tucked into his belly, like we'd known each other for years and I was his wonderful girl and we both slept great.”

“I am the drying meadow; you the unspoken apology; he is the fluctuating distance between mother and son; she is the first gesture that creates a quiet that is full enough to make the baby sleep.My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside.Amen.”

“That at the same time of this very intimate act of concentrating so carefully on the details of our mother's palm and fingertips, he was also removing all traces of any tiny leftover parts, and suddenly a ritual which I'd always found incestuous and gross seemed to me more like a desperate act on Joseph's part to get out, to leave, to extract every little last remnant and bring it into open air.”