“You think I don't know about wrong love, June? You think I don't understand embarrassing love?”

“I thought of all the different kinds of love in the world. I could think of ten without even trying. The way parents love their kids, the way you love a puppy or chocolate ice cream or home or your favorite book or your sister. Or your uncle. There's those kinds of love and then there's the other kind. The falling kind.”

“The real question for me is why Lieutenant Cable and Nellie didn’t just get together. Because they would have been a perfect match. I guess the idea is that opposites attract, but I don’t think that’s what it’s like in real life. I think in real life you’d want someone who was as close to you as possible. Someone who could understand exactly the way you thought.”

“I stared hard, trying to find a pattern. Thinking if I kept looking hard enough, maybe the pieces of the world would fit back together into something I could understand.”

“Because maybe I don't want to leave the planet invisible. Maybe I need at least one person to remember something about me.”

“Why, June, you sound surprised.” He’d put on an offended-housewife voice, but it was in a hoarse whisper, so it sounded like an offended housewife who smoked five packs of cigarettes a day. I laughed.”

“I thought of trying to catch her eye, so she’d know I understood what she’d done, but I decided not to. Everyone needs to think they have secrets.”