“Perhaps I identify too well with my father's illicit awe. A trace of this seems caught in the photo, just as a trace of Roy has been caught on the light-sensitive paper...It's a curiously ineffectual attempt at censorship. Why cross out the year and not the month? Why, for that matter, leave the photo in the envelope at all?In an act of prestidigitation typical of the way my father juggled his public appearance and private reality, the evidence is simultaneously hidden and revealed.”

“On our second date, she kissed me in a bar. I invited her home. We just caught the F train, which seemed like a good omen.”

“If there was ever a bigger pansy than my father, it was Marcel Proust.”

“At first I was glad for the help. My freshmen English class, "Mythology and Archetypal Experience," confounded me. I didn't understand why we couldn't just read books without forcing contorted interpretations on then”

“How Horrid" has a slightly facetious tone that strikes me as Wildean. It appears to embrace the actual horror--puberty, public disgrace--then at the last second nimbly sidesteps it, laughing.”

“My father once nearly came to blows with a female dinner guest about whether a particular patch of embroidery was fuchsia or magenta.But the infinite gradations of color in a fine sunset - from salmon to canary to midnight blue - left him wordless.”

“She has given me a way out.”