“Sage would survive. I'd survive. We were better off apart. Painful and quick, just like ripping off a Band-Aid. Well, more like gouging a piece of shrapnel out of my stomach, pouring a bottle of gin into the wound, lighting it on fire, and sewing my guts up with a dirty bootlace. But the concept was the same.”

“Hey, if you'd wanted to avoid 'this,' you shouldn't have lured me last night. Now it's too late. You might as well avoid the long, drawn-out pain and get it over with quickly. Sort of like taking off a Band-Aid. Or cutting off a limb.""Wow, who says there's no romance left in the world?”

“I'd like to be everybody in the world' I said. 'I'd like to live a million times.''Well'--and here my father gave one of his sagely nods--'that would be a fine piece of magic, wouldn't it?”

“I'd wear any of my private attire for the world to see. But I would rather have an open flesh wound than ever wear a band aid in public.”

“When she left, it was like someone had ripped my heart out, crumbled it up like a flimsy piece of loose leaf paper and crammed it back into my chest. It somehow managed to work, but it would never, ever feel the same.”

“But belligerence was a poor aid to concentration, as were three gins and a bottle of wine”