“I thought you were saying no, no discussion at all”

“Again and again as we discussed Lolita in that class, our discussions were colored by my students' hidden personal sorrows and joys. Like tearstains on a letter, these forays into the hidden and the personal shaded all our discussions of Nabokov. And more and more I thought of that butterfly; what linked us so closely was this perverse intimacy of victim and jailer.”

“So it's still standing? I would've thought you two had knocked it to rubble by now. What were you doing last night? Discussing the national debt?”

“I thought if you loved someone you were supposed to, like, forgive them. I thought that was what love was supposed to be all about."Cork shook his head: "Easy to say, harder to do.”

“Sam: "I always thought you were the most beautiful of all the Nephilim."Meg: "That's ironic because I always thought you were the ugliest of all the angels.”

“It’s good.’ She chirps the last bit as if that were all to say about a book: It’s good or it’s bad. I liked it or I didn’t. No discussions of the writing, the themes, the nuances, the structure. Just good or bad. Like a hot dog.”