“Tell me–how old are you, Reuben? I'm thirty-eight. How is that for total honesty? Do you know many women who volunteer they're thirty-eight?”

“Just lie back, wench."She snickered. "Did you call me wench? Well, you certainly dated yourself there, didn't you? Sometimes I forget how old you are. What's your age, anyway? Thirty-seven? Thirty-eight?""I'm thirty-three.”

“How can you govern a country with two hundred thirty-eight varieties of cheese?”

“The cruellest thing you can do to Kerouac is reread him at thirty-eight.”

“When you are five, you know your age down to the month. Even in your twenties, you know how old you are. I'm twenty-three you say, or maybe twenty-seven. But then in your thirties, something strange starts to happen. It is a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I'm--you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you are not. You're thirty-five. And then you're bothered, because you wonder if this is the beginning of the end. It is, of course, but it's decades before you admit it.”

“So here I am. Twenty-eight years old, with thirty looming on the horizon. Drunk. Fat. Alone. Unloved. And, worst of all, a cliche, Ally McBeal and Bridget Jones put together, which was probably about how much I weighed...”