“Toy is talking and this is why I love her. She can go on about herself ceaselessly and like the scratching of a branch against the window at night, the steady insistence of it is comforting. She has stories without beginnings, stories that trail off, stories that crisscross and contradict and dead end.Toy is the star of her stories. Events orbit her like a constellation.”

“She moaned into her pillow. "Go away. I feel like dying.""No fair maiden should die alone," he said, putting a hand on hers. "Shall I read to you in your final moments? What story would you like?"She snatched her hand back. "How about the story of the idiotic prince who won't leave the assassin alone?""Oh! I love that story! It has such a happy ending, too—why, the assassin was really feigning her illness in order to get the prince's attention! Who would have guessed it? Such a clever girl. And the bedroom scene is so lovely—it's worth reading through all of their ceaseless banter!”

“She starkly sees her inanimate future blocked out before her right through to her own end—without him... ...and worst of all, she knows she will be asked about him and be called upon to talk about him and tell the story again and again...her jaws will work without end with all that talking her jaws will chew up the ravel of all her remaining life, telling the same story until it becomes bare and alien and something blunt to her; more the belonging of other people, and no longer hers. Now she has to live ordinarily...she's going to have to numb herself if she's going to go on—no going on from this point without getting numb.”

“But as she continued and finished her tale, I could tell that her heart was elsewhere, and when she excused herself to go to bed, she left without saying good night. After that, the princesses in her stories were always beautiful. Always.”

“When I met a truly beautiful girl, I would tell her that if she spent the night with me, I would write a novel or a story about her. This usually worked; and if her name was to be in the title of the story, it almost always worked. Then, later, when we'd passed a night of delicious love-making together, after she’d gone and I’d felt that feeling of happiness mixed with sorrow, I sometimes would write a book or story about her. Sometimes her character, her way about herself, her love-making, it sometimes marked me so heavily that I couldn't go on in life and be happy unless I wrote a book or a story about that woman, the happy and sad memory of that woman. That was the only way to keep her, and to say goodbye to her without her ever leaving.”

“And I feel like a real Dad when I read to her at night. She won't sleep without one story, at least.”