“Once you got started, all you had to do was keep placing one foot in front of the other, no matter how happy or sad you were. I'd taken that first step because I'd wanted to look better. I'd wanted my clothes to fit. But it hadn't taken me long to figure out that the biggest benefit was less about vanity than it was about sanity. Walking always helped.”

“What has started you on this?" I asked. "We were talking about the holidays." "Los Angeles is not a safe place for a young woman alone. I feel it in my bones.""That's your arthritis, Aunt Sadie. Do you want me to get a gun? I'd probably shoot myself in the foot.""I'd rather you got married again.""That might be worse than shooting myself in the foot.”

“I used to wonder what it would look like if all my footsteps were painted red: all the steps I'd ever taken in all the places I'd ever been.”

“I was naked and he had more possessions than he could use all at once. I was the proletarian, he was the capitalist, and my relations to him were reduced to the basic proposition of all revolutions: die, I want what you have. It was the first time in my life I'd taken an interest in politics.”

“I'd sit at my kitchen table and start scanning help-wanted ads on my laptop, but then a browser tab would blink and I'd get distracted and follow a link to a long magazine article about genetically modified wine grapes. Too long, actually, so I'd add it to my reading list. Then I'd follow another link to a book review. I'd add the review to my reading list, too, then download the first chapter of the book—third in a series about vampire police. Then, help-wanted ads forgotten, I'd retreat to the living room, put my laptop on my belly, and read all day. I had a lot of free time.”

“We'd walk home together in the foggy summer night and I'd tell her about sex; the good stuff, like how it could be warm and exciting--it took you away--and the not-so-good things, like how once you showed someone that part of yourself, you had to trust them one thousand percent and anything could happen. Someone you thought you knew could change and suddenly not want you, suddenly decide you made a better story than a girlfriend. Or how sometimes you might think you wanted to do it and then halfway through or afterward realize no, you just wanted the company, really; you wanted someone to choose you, and the sex part itself was like a trade-off, something you felt like you had to give to get the other part. I'd tell her that and help her decide. I'd be a friend.”