“They say the smart dog obeys but the smarter dog knows when to disobey.”

“I told him about the way they get to know you. Not the way people do, the way they flatter you by wanting to know every last thing about you, only it isn't a compliment, it is just efficient, a person getting more quickly to the end of you. Correction - dogs do want to know every last thing about you. They take in the smell of you, they know from the next room, asleep, when a mood settles over you. The difference is there's not an end to it.”

“Then the children went to bed, or at least went upstairs, and the men joined the women for a cigarette on the porch, absently picking ticks engorged like grapes off the sleeping dogs. And when the men kissed the women good night, and their weekend whiskers scratched the women's cheeks, the women did not think shave, they thought stay.”

“All those years on the psychiatrist's couch and suddenly the couch is moving.Good God, she is on that couch when the big one hits.Maidy didn't tell you, but you know what her doctor said? She sprang from the couch and said, "My God, was that an earthquake?"The doctor said this: "Did it feel like an earthquake to you?”

“What I think," Chatty says, "is that if a man loves a woman more than a woman loves a man, then they're even.”

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

“The worst of it is over now, and I can't say that I am glad. Lose that sense of loss--you have gone and lost something else.”