“Making love to him was like going through a car wash, except you came out dirtier and more alive at the other end.”

“You can not figure out love without figuring out death, too, but the effort it takes can knock the wind out of you. Love is the first cousin of death, they're acquainted with each other, they go to the same family reunions.”

“His was the kind of beauty for which you would pay the price of a lifetime of sorrow and all the varieties of rage. Eventually, you would have to go to church to get rid of him.”

“Their imaginations put the scene on a film loop. Guiltily, they watched it until their mental screens began to wash the rest of the past away.”

“In truth, there are only two realities: the one for people who are in love or love each other, and the one for people who are standing outside all that.”

“The problem with love and God, the two of them, is how to say anything about them that doesn’t annihilate them instantly with the wrong words, with untruth. . . . In this sense, love and God are equivalents. We feel both, but because we cannot speak clearly about them, we end up–wordless, inarticulate—by denying their existence altogether, and, pfffffft, they die.”

“Because it is the Midwest, no one really glitters because no one has to, it's more of a dull shine, like frequently used silverware.”