“The summer has seized you,as when, last month in Amalfi, I sawlemons as large as your desk-side globe-that miniature map of the world-and I could mention, too,the market stalls of mushroomsand garlic bugs all engorged.Or I even think of the orchard next door,where the berries are doneand the apples are beginning to swell.And once, with our first backyard,I remember I planted an acre of yellow beanswe couldn’t eat.”

“Were the stars out when I left the house last evening? All I could remember was the couple in the Skyline listening to Duran Duran. Stars? Who remembers stars? Come to think of it, had I even looked up at the sky recently? Had the stars been wiped out of the sky three months ago, I wouldn’t have known.”

“Do you remember that old TV series, Get Smart? Do you remember at the beginning where Maxwell Smart is walking down the secret corridor and there are all of those doors that open sideways, and upside down and gateways and stuff? I think that everyone keeps a whole bunch of doors just like this between themselves and the world. But when you're in love, all of your doors are open, and all of their doors are open. And you roller-skate down your halls together.”

“Hip," I murmur, remembering last night, how I lost it completely in a stall at Nell's---my mouth foaming, all I could think about were insects, lots of insects, and running at pigeons, foaming at the mouth and running at pigeons.”

“I wanted to tell you everything. And that hurt because some things were too scary. Some things even I didn’t understand. How could I tell someone—someone I was really talking to for the first time—everything I was thinking?I couldn’t. It was too soon.”

“How could you begin?’ said she. ‘I can comprehend your going on when you had once made a beginning, but what could set you off in the first place?’ ‘I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which had laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”