“The female crab has an impenetrable shell, she is so hard on the outside and yet so soft within. There is no possible point of access. The male crab must wait a whole year until the female decides to shed her shell to grow a new one. And it is only at that moment of vulnerability that the patient crab can triumph in his love.”

“Fucking pyromanic, Crazier'n a male crab, that one.”

“Crabs, crabs, crabs. Crabs the size of beach donkeys.”

“Many love stories are like the shells of hermit crabs, though others are more like chambered nautiluses, whose architecture grows with the inhabitant and whose abandoned smaller chambers are lighter than water and let them float in the sea.”

“There is bound to be variation in the population of males in their predisposition to be faithful husbands. If females could recognize such qualities in advance, they could benefit themselves by choosing males possessing them. One way for a female to do this is to play hard to get for a long time, to be coy. Any male who is not patient enough to wait until the female eventually consents to copulate is not likely to be a good bet as a faithful husband.”

“We were all like a gaggle of hermit crabs without shells, flopping around trying to find ourselves. Instead we found each other, and that's just as good, I guess.”