“It's not easy, pairing yourself off with someone forever. It's an admirable thing, and I'm glad you're both doing it, but, boy-oh-girl-oh, there will be days you wish you'd never done it. And those will be the good times, when it's only days of regret and not months.”

“He needed no foreplay for the interview, and I was grateful. It's like sweet-talking your date when you both know you're about to get laid.”

“But I know I'll never sleep again. I can't close my eyes when I'm next to her. It's like sleeping with a spider.”

“How do you know you're not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: 'I like strong women.' If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because 'I like strong women' is code for: 'I hate strong women.”

“How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky?”

“It's impossible to compete with the dead. I wished I could stop trying.”

“New York was packed with writers, real writers, because there were magazines, real magazines, loads of them. This was back when the Internet was still some exotic pet kept in the corner of the publishing world--throw some kibble at it, watch it dance on its little leash, oh quite cute, it definitely won't kill us in the night.”