“I guess that's the point of drinking, to take all the feelings and thoughts and morals away until you are just a body doing what a body will do.”

“And this all causes her to wonder at the disparity between the silk dresses and the natural postures of the body, and to think: How far, HOW FAR, we are willing to go to pretend we are not of the body at all.”

“Sometimes it seems to me that all of life is a struggle to contain the natural impulses of the body and spirit, and that what we call character represents only the degree to which we are successful in this endeavor.”

“And she thought then how strange it was that disaster—the sort of disaster that drained the blood from your body and took the air out of your lungs and hit you again and again in the face—could be at times, such a thing of beauty.”

“-Do you recognize suffering? -I hope I do. -Injustice? -Again, I hope I would. -Then you are a political man.”

“And so a person can never promise to love someone forever because you never know what might come up, what terrible thing the person you love might do.”

“I thought about how one tiny decision can change a life. A decision that takes only a split second to make.”