“Meggie Folchart: Having writer's block? Maybe I can help.Fenoglio: Oh yes, that's right. You want to be a writer, don't you?Meggie Folchart: You say that as if it's a bad thing.Fenoglio: Oh no, it's just a lonely thing. Sometimes the world you create on the page seems more friendly and alive than the world you actually live in.”

“Nat:I don't know. The weight of it, I guess. At some point it becomes bearable. It turns into something you can crawl out from under. And carry around--like a brick in your pocket. And you forget it every once in a while, but then you reach in for whatever reason and there it is: "Oh right. That." Which can be awful. But not all the time. Sometime's it kinda ... Not that you like it exactly, but it's what you have instead of your son, so you don't wanna let go of it either. So you carry it around. And it doesn't go away, which is ...Becca:What?Nat:Fine ... actually.”

“So even the most unlikely events have to take place somewhere ...”

“It isn't a bad thing to hear voices... but you mustn't for a minute imagine that all is wise that comes to you out of the night world.”

“Have you noticed how difficult it is just to get along in the world? If you're no good at all in your job, people treat you badly and eventually you will be unemployed. And if you're a little better than competent, everyone expects miracles from you, every single time. Like most of life, it's a no-win situation. And if you dare to mention it, no matter how creatively you phrase your complaints, you are shunned as a whiner.”

“Nobody ever feels just one way about another person, Margo. We're so much more complicated than that. I can see a million things you want from me, just like the million things I want from you. Some of them are wonderful. Some are awful. Some contradict each other, and some don't make sense at all. But none of those things matter, not really. What matters is what you do about them.”

“Oh, dear God, you don't actually have a brain, do you, it's more a filigreed spiderweb, with little chambers in it where trained monkeys play the pipe organ.”