“Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.”

“If you took a cracked pot and you cracked that cracked pot, you'd be approaching the level of cracked pottery we are talking about here.”

“It rankled her that people richer than she were so often less worthy and attractive. More slobbish and louty. Comfort could be found in being poorer than people who were smart and beautiful. But to be less affluent than these T-shirted, joke-cracking fatsos-”

“It hurt, of course, but more often than not the best things do, I've found.”

“I start to see that I surround myself with broken people; more broken than me. Ah, yes, let me count your cracks. Let's see, one hundred, two... yes, you'll do nicely. A cracked companion makes me look more whole, gives me something outside myself to care for. When I'm with whole, healed people I feel my own cracks, the shatters, the insanities of dislocation in myself.”

“There was a lid for each pot, she'd told me often and soberly, and she thanked God she'd found her lid in my grandfather.”