“Even though my reason wanted the state of death, I was afraid like a virgin of the act.”

“I was afraid like a virgin of the act. I would have liked death to come with due warning, so that I could prepare myself. For what? I didn't know, nor how, except by taking a look around at the little I would be leaving.”

“It is always an act of desperation, and I keep asking, even though I know it will never work the way I want it to.”

“I’m a Colorado boy at heart, even though my surrounding body is like the landmass containing the encircling 47 states. But I love like Hawaii and Alaska—hot and cold and from a distance.”

“In the South you are ashamed of being a virgin. Boys. Men. They lie about it. Because it means less to women, Father said. He said it was men invented virginity not women. Father said it's like death: only a state in which the others are left and I said, But to believe it doesn't matter and he said, That's what's so sad about anything: not only virginity and I said, Why couldn't it have been me and not her who is unvirgin and he said, That's why that's sad too; nothing is even worth the changing of it...”

“Since you act as though God is dead, I wanted to join you in the mourning."The reply of Martin Luther's wife, in full funeral regalia, in trying to illustrate the folly of his depressed state.”