“To stutter through it with you or even stop stuttering and say nothing, was so lucky and soft, better talk than mile-a-minute with anyone. After a few minutes we’d stop rattling, we’d adjust, we’d settle in, and the conversation would speed into the night.”

“Sometimes I think if we didn’t have these problems the whole world would stop spinning on her axis, we’d all stop spinning on our axises, axes, or whatever you want to call them, and then we’d have to settle into the nasty business of finding a way to be happy.”

“Everyone on earth would never starve and forever find love and happiness, since we won, but if we’d lost, they would have gouged out our eyes and thrown us naked onto hot coals and poisonous snakes for all the cheering and hugging at the end, strangers hugging like the end of The Omega Virus when Steve Sturmine finds the antidote.”

“But just suddenly I really, really needed to see you again right that minute, that night.”

“Stop saying no offense,” I said, “when you say offensive things. It’s not a free pass.”

“Someone can break your heart, leave you dead on the lawn, and still you never learn what to say to stop it all over again.”

“After a certain age, you couldn't even say where you were from. You went someplace, and lived there. And then you went someplace else.”