“George had been surprised by my ability to leave him. He had not seen that in me.”

“My attraction had been immediate and profound. And it had nothing to do with the way he looked. My attraction was to what resided between his lines.”

“My brother had very specific likes and dislikes. Basically, he liked anything until it harmed him and then he was wary.”

“Dennis's superior mental health was obvious from the first date, like a cleft palate. The other thing about him was that he had shapely, muscular legs. His calves were so sculpted they looked artificial, like silicone implants. This is a look I'm fond of. In fact, if I had been born a girl there is no doubt in my mind that my chest cavity would have been stuffed with two softball-sized orbs of silicone before my eleventh birthday. In this way my own mental health is somewhat like a cleft palate.”

“Glen had a disability more disfiguring than a burn and more terrifying than cancer. Glen had been born on the day after Christmas. "My parents just combine my birthday with Christmas, that's all," he explained.But we knew this was a lie. Glen's parents just wrapped a couple of his Christmas presents in birthday-themed wrapping paper, stuck some candles in a supermarket cake, and had a dinner of Christmas leftovers.”

“I missed him so much that I had physical sensations of loss, all over my body. Like one minute I was missing an arm, the next my spleen. It was making me feel sick, like throwing up.”

“It turned out I had always been a smoker. I just hadn't had any cigarettes.”