“The real safety net of life is community, family and nature.”

“When we carry a safety net made of cash, we allow the one made of community to slip through our fingers.”

“There is no norm, no safety net,No way to rationalize what you’d rather forget”

“Sisters function as safety nets in a chaotic world simply by being there for each other.”

“And yet he kept sticking to her life like gum on the sole of her shoe, either on the Net or in real life. On the Net was OK. There he was no more than electrons and words. In real life, standing on her doorstep, he was still fucking attractive. And he knew her secrets just as she knew all of his.”

“The backstreet cafe in Casablanca was for me a place of mystery, a place with a soul, a place with danger. There was a sense that the safety nets had been cut away, that each citizen walked upon the high wire of this, the real world. I longed not merely to travel through it, but to live in such a city.”