“What the hell makes you so smart?" I asked. "I wouldn't go for coffee with you, " she answered. "Listen -- I wouldn't ask you." "That, "she replied "is what makes you stupid.”

“What the hell makes you smart?" I asked."I wouldn't go for coffee with you.""Listen - I wouldn't ask you.""That," she replied, "is what makes you stupid.”

“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.”

“What term do you employ when you speak of your progenitor?"I answered with the term I'd always wanted to employ."Sonovabitch.""To his face?" she asked."I never see his face.""He wears a mask?""In a way, yes. Of stone. Of absolute stone.”

“Sometimes I ask myself what would I be if Jenny were alive.And then I answer :I would also be alive." - Oliver.”

“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.”

“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?”