“Some would say it is madness to want a woman this way,but I think it must be love. Not the tepid, fickle love of which thepoets sing—the love that forms or fades with kindness or cruelty.No, this love is something more divine—like the love of a god, bothvengeful and benign. It is as constant as the sea. And as beautiful.As dangerous. As mysterious.She is the only woman to ever refuse me. And yet, I want…”

“How do you punish a man when your heart beats in his chest? How do you hurt your beloved without also hurting yourself?”

“How do you punisha man when your heart beats in his chest? How do you hurt your beloved without also hurting yourself?”

“Sometimes, we need little lies to save our pride. And sometimes we need big lies to save our souls.”

“Wife,” I say, staring straight into her eyes. “Think what you want, but there isn’t a single woman in this whole damn universe that I could ever love like I love you.”

“So here we sit on the island of misfit lovers. The broken, the maimed, the malformed, who still, all sensible evidence to the contrary, believe in love, crave love.”

“Then came that sigh. I wish I had had a tape recorder handy every time in my life that I heard a boy sigh at the outset of urination. What a lovely sound. So much satisfaction. Girls sigh far less often before they pee, and not with the same devotion, I think. If only I had such a recording of boys' sighs. I would lie on a pillow in the sunlight of the late afternoon, sometimes listening to Chopin, sometimes Schubert, and sometimes to the sighs, seriatim, of all the boys about to pee.”