“Dan thought of love as defined by books, cobwebbed and hidden from view by the past. Too bad a love like that didn't actually exist. In the twentieth century one had to fake it.”

“We read poems from the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Verse. Neil insisted on spilling wine over my carpet.”

“At home they thought of white people as a vague but powerful entity--like the forces that control the weather, that capable of destruction, that hidden from view.”

“we've popped out ceiling tiles and found badly spliced cables hidden from view”

“Books. The more I thought about how to stop and get myself back together as one sane, whole person, the more I thought about books. I thought about escape. Not running to escape but reading to escape. Cyril Connolly, twentieth-century writer and critic, wrote that “words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.” That was how I wanted to use books: as an escape back to life. I wanted to engulf myself in books and come up whole again.”

“She had two blueberries for eyes, and hair the color of strawberries. Too bad our love never made it past the kitchen and into the bedroom (or garage).”