“Where exactly do you put your hands on somebody who hurts everywhere?”

“You all have stories, Sandy said. And we have secrets”

“It's hard to kill yourself by taking Tylenol. You die from liver failure, which takes a long time...”

“Yeah, well, I wanted to be a screenwriter, and guess what? I am one. That's the other tragedy in life.”

“her knees, which looked, in the faint blue light, as though they'd been carved by water from a bar of soap.”

“My ideal life is a quiet one. I like to read, to sit still in the same chair, with the lampshade at a certain angle, alone, or with Meagan nearby, and now and then, if I'm lucky, I'll come across a lovely phrase or fine sentiment, look up from my book, and feel the harmony of some notion, the justice of it, and know that everything is there. That's life to me, those privately discovered moments. ”

“But she couldn't dismiss easily his light touch with her. No pushing or pressing, none of that herding and corralling bullshit, unlike any of her old boyfriends. And maybe who you fell for and who you eventually loved wasn't rational, no matter how hard you tried to list pros and cons and sum the results. You couldn't think your way through it, not all the way. Maybe just the scent of somebody carried more weight than everything else put together.”