“Look at me. My concerns-are they spiritual, do you think, or carnal? Come on. We've read our Shakespeare.”

“She introduces me to a nurse as the Best Friend. The impersonal article is more intimate. It tells me that they are intimate, the nurse and my friend.'I was telling her we used to drink Canada Dry ginger ale and pretend were were in Canada' 'That's how dumb we were,' I say. 'You could be sisters,' the nurse says. So how come, I'll bet they are wondering, it took me so long to get to such a glorious place? But do they ask? They do not ask. Two months, and how long is the drive? The best I can explain it is this - I have a friend who worked one summer in a mortuary. He used to tell me stories. The one that really got to me was not eh grisliest, but it's the one that did. A man wrecked his care on 101 going south. He did not lose consciousness. But his arm was taken down to the bone - and when he looked at it - it scared him to death. I mean, he died. So I hadn't dared to look any closer. But now I'm doing it - and hoping that I will live through it.”

“I know that homes burn and that you should think what to save before they start to. Not because, in the heat of it, everything looks as valuable as everything else. But, because nothing looks worth the bother, not even your life.”

“Before I took to the road, a friend tried to get me to go to a department store with him. He said it was to improve the place where I lived. He said," I want to know you are reading beneath this lamp. " This fellow was dying. He knew it and I did not. I think he was tucking me in. He was making sure all of his friends had the right lamps, the comfiest pillows, the softest sheets. He was tucking us all in for the night.”

“I meet a person, and in my mind I'm saying three minutes; I give you three minutes to show me the spark.”

“The other day I was playing Scrabble. I saw that I could close the space in D-E- -Y. I had an N and an F. Which do you think I chose? What was the word I made?”

“Since his mother died I have seen him steam a cucumber thinking it was zucchini. That's the kind of thing that turns my heart right over.”