“There is something underwhelming about scholarly hate mail — the sad literary allusions, the refusal to use contractions – and so I didn't pay much attention to those letters at all.”

“When he did that, I didn't hate him anymore, I really didn't, and maybe this is why people do so many hateful things to the people that who love them: because it's so easy to stop hating someone if you've already started loving them.”

“I didn't normally talk this way: but sometimes you have to pretend to be an innocent child to learn something about the complicated world of adults.”

“But maybe this is what happens when you hate someone for so long: the person you hate dies, but the hate stays with you, to keep you company.”

“I could hear the exasperation in her voice, so beautiful and familiar, but sad, too, like hearing church bells right before your funeral.”

“And I thought that maybe this was what it means to get old: to have someone much younger remind you of how you weren't the same person you used to be.”

“About me as a drinker: I wasn't much of one and had a short, bad history of doing it. The few times I'd tried drinking I either became too much like myself or not enough, but either way it was always calamity on top of calamity and I found myself saying way too much about too little and doing the wrong things in the wrong places. Once, at my boss's Christmas party, I passed out for a minute - passed out but still, like a zombie, remained fully ambulatory and mostly functional - and when I came to, I found myself in my boss's kitchen, the refrigerator door open and me next to it at the counter, spreading mayonnaise onto two slices of wheat bread and licking the knife after each pass before I stuck it back in the jar. I heard someone cough or gag, looked up, and saw the kitchen's population staring at me, all of their mouths open and slack, obviously wondering what I thought I was doing, exactly, and all I could think to say was, "Sandwich." Which is what I said. And then, to prove my point, whatever the point was, I ate it. The sandwich, that is.”