“She looked into space a lot, didn't say much, and kissed my father when midnight came, as if she were punching a time card.”

“She wore too much eyeliner then, at age thirteen, and now, at eighteen, she wears so much black under her eyes, she looks like a slutty linebacker raccoon.”

“I never asked her how she was, because I didn't really think about how she was. I just thought about what she thought of me.”

“I get the urge to feel it, too, so when she takes her hand away, I turn her toward me and I feel the edges of New Jersey. I kiss Hoboken and Atlantic City. I kiss Newark and Trenton. I kiss Camden, and then I follow the road west, over the Walt Whitman Bridge into Pennsylvania. And I kiss home.”

“You two would make a cute couple,” she says as she passes by with a full dough tray in her arms. I don’t know why she says it. We aren’t doing anything but folding boxes with the other drivers and telling dirty jokes.But we would.We would make a cute couple.”

“DAD: Why didn't you say this when it happened?ME: It's complicated.Don't they know that regret begets regret begets regret?DR. B: Vera, you need to answer the question.ME: Because I loved Charlie too much.DAD: Loved him?DR. B: Is that all?ME: Because I hated Charlie too much.”

“I didn't have the time to slice a hundred shallow cuts into his lips and make him suck limes. I was too busy to make him swallow oiled musket balls. I had more important things to think about now and a lot to do. -Saffron in Dust of 100 Dogs”