“then why sell?" James had asked. "have to," Redmond said. "if I want to get married and have children and live in this city, I have to." "since when do you want to get married and have kids?" James asked. "since now. Life gets boring when you're middle-aged. You can't keep doing the same thing. You look like an asshole. You ever notice that?" Redmond had asked.”

“When you're alone, it's easier," she said a little wistfully. "You can do what you want. You don't have to go home.”

“I didn't want it to be this way." "Yes, you did," she said, "because it is.""I just want to be with someone normal," he said. "I just want to have a normal life.""Excuse me," she said."You're a little crazy," he said. "You're too old to act the way you do. You've got to grow up. You've got to take care of yourdelf. I'm afraid for you. You can't think that people are going to take care of you all the time.”

“I know I have to do the right thing. And the sooner you do the right thing, the better. You get it over with, and you don't have to worry about it anymore. But who does that in real life? Instead, you procrastinate and think about it and put it off and think about it some more until that one little pebble grows into a giant block inside your head.”

“All those men who end up disappointing you. After a while, you don't even want to have feelings anymore. You just want to get on with your life.”

“The world is full of people who all want the same thing, and you have to do a little something extra to make them remember you.”

“He still went out nearly every night. I thought, is this what he's going to do when we have the baby? Have I made another terrible mistake with a man? You don't really know a man until you have a child with him. Then you see so much. Is he kind? Is he tolerant? Is he loving? Or is he immature and egotistical and selfish? When you have a child, it can go two ways with your husband: You love him even more, or you lose all respect for him. And if you lose respect, there's no way to get it back...”