“Listen, here's what I'd like to do: I'd like to live in a trailer and play records all night.”

“Reading it the night before, I'd wondered if it would be like that for me-if in one moment, I would finally understand her, know her, and understand the role I'd played in her dying. But I wasn't convinced enlightenment struck like lightining.”

“I'd like to hear five recordings of Louis Armstrong playing and singing "What Did I Do to Be so Black and Blue"-all at the same time. Sometimes now I listen to Louis while I have my favorite dessert of vanilla ice cream and sloe gin. I pour the red liquid over the white mound, watching it glisten and the vapor rising as Louis bends that military instrument into a beam of lyrical sound.”

“For a long time that's all I could do, howl and scream and cry like the wild animal of the night that I'd become.”

“Do I look like someone who has something to do here on earth?' —That's what I'd like to answer the busybodies who inquire into my activities.”

“I hope I never figure out who broke your heart and if I do, if I do. I'd spend all night losing sleep. I'd spend the night and I'd lose my mind. Well I'd spend the night and I'd lose my mind.”