“Min­nie Four-Eyes.”

“I wanted to keep looking at her because I wanted to never take my eyes from her, but still I had tolower my eyes, I was so ashamed that even now Jenny was reading my mind so perfectly.'Listen, that's the only goddamn thing I'm asking, Ollie. Otherwise, I know you'll be okay.' That thing in my gut was stirring again, so I was afraid to even speak the word 'okay.' I justlooked mutely at Jenny.”

“Jenny, if you're so con­vinced I'm a loser, why did you bull­doze me into buy­ing you cof­fee?'She looked me straight in the eye and smiled.'I like your body,' she said.”

“But what does he do to qualify as a sonovabitch?” Jenny asked.“Make me”, I replied.“Beg pardon?”“Make me”, I repeated.Her eyes widened like saucers. “You mean like incest?” she asked.“Don’t give me your family problems, Jen. I have enough of my own.”“Like what, Oliver?” she asked, “like just what is it he makes you do?”“The ‘right things’”, I said. “What’s wrong with the ‘right things’?” she asked, delighting in the apparent paradox.”

“Either way I don't come first, which for some stupid reason bothers hell out of me, having grown up with the notion that I always had to be number one. Family heritage, don't you know?”

“...namque...solebatismeas esse aliquid putare nuqas”

“We have turned doctors into gods and worship their deity by offering up our bodies and our souls - not to mention our worldly goods.And yet paradoxically, they are the most vulnerable of human beings. Their suicide rate is eight times the national average. Their percentage of drug addiction is one hundred times higherAnd because they are painfully aware that they cannot live up to our expectations, their anguish is unquantifiably intense. They have aptly been called 'wounded healers.' "~ Barney Livingston, M.D.(Doctors, 1989)”