“Stories are consoling, fiction is one of the consolation prizes for having lived in the world.”

“Lovemaking is the consolation for living in the body, just as art is the consolation for living in the world.”

“To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative — the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time.”

“I'm not the consolation prize, Dex. I'm not something you resort to. I happen to think I'm worth more than that.”

“Beautiful gay men are God's gift to women. They're like a consolation prize for ...well, for everything else about being a woman.”

“Lives in stories have direction and meaning. Even stupid, meaningless lives, like Lenny's in "Of Mice and Men," Acquire through their places in a story at least the dignity and meaning of being Stupid, Meaningless Lives, the consolation of being exemplars of something. In real life you do not get even that.”