“When a state trooper passes me on the highway, I grit my teeth, check my speed, and hope nobody put a dead guy in the trunk while I was in Wal-Mart last night at two a.m.”

“there's not a girl who's more hopeful than a slut, more optimistic.She may give in but she doesn't give up.She keeps looking, she keeps hoping, she's always waiting for that someone who will say it: i love you too.”

“I could ask him if he think "a lot" means the same as "too many"...I could tell him that he shouldn't call a girl a slut because someday she might be somebody's mother...maybe she's a slut because she's lonely, she's sad, she's hoping someone or something will make the lonely and sad go away.”

“No one would ever know it to look at me that as soon as I'm alone I am busy busy busy in the head.”

“I'm afraid that my wife picked up a number of colorful expressions from the Yanks and such, Frank offered, with a nervous smile.True, I said, gritting my teeth as I wrapped a water-soaked napkin about my hand. Men tend to be very colorful when you're picking shrapnel out of them.”

“The problem, I decided, is that most human beings between the ages of twelve and fifteen look like their needs are special (retarded). ”

“I've been noble since they took you to the hospital," he said through his teeth. "I'm tired of it. I don't eat, I don't sleep, I can't even work. I remember your voice moaning in my ear like the cry of the damned while I was having you," he bit off, bending to her mouth. "You couldn't get enough of me. You couldn't get close enough to me. Your face when I fulfilled you....I ache every time I think about it.”