“Judgment helps one to make the appropriate decision at the appropriate moment and diminish the influence of fate.”

“I suppose memory has at least two faces, and capricious ones at that.”

“His nervous eyes watched me above his words, apologizing for the ways the excuses weren't right even as he couldn't stop presenting them.”

“Looking back now, there's something that bothers me abut the newspaper article about her death: it has Celine as Knockout, as Queen Bee, as Prom Superstar. The kid the newspaper grieved for wasn't Celine. She was none of those things. Their version of her was less distinctive than the real Celine was, less an individual, devoid of any real-life individual's quirks and smudges. The paper seemed to believe Celine's death could only be fully newsworthy, only fully sad, if she were outlandishly beautiful, outlandishly popular, outlandishly everything.”

“I have come to love you in spite of---" Do I want to be loved in spite of?...Does anyone?”

“I think each family has a funhouse logic all its own, and in that distortion,in that delusion, all behavior can seem both perfectly normal and crazy.”

“Love was now a mild streamlet that advanced in drips around my feet; despite how hard I worked at tenderness, I could not drown in a thing that shallow.”