“It's not just love, or desire, but something profoundly less complex, as unadorned and simple as the vehicle code. Officer laughs, cries. Tearful and giddy, she whales on her demonstrator with what she realizes is joy in her heart.”

“You get where you are by yourself. There's no regret in that. That's just the way it is.”

“And I know this, too: that I owe nothing to Dave, that I owe nothing to anybody. You get where you are by yourself. There’s no regret in that. That’s just the way it is..”

“The shaking will either stop or keep going. Life is lived from moment to moment.”

“I read books. I know who I am.”

“Love, she thought, he'd typed "love" just as she had. A multifacedted word, love, there probably wasn't another word in this or any other language that had so many shades and degrees. She knew that he loved her and she loved him, just as she loved Adam and Adam loved her. But with love, theirs or his, it was always a question of degree, and what one was willing to do to express that degree.”

“It was only later, in her new, darker rooms above the banking house, that she realized it didn’t matter how loud she screamed or how violently she wept. Her parents would never come to her because, being dead, they didn’t care anymore.”