“Logos are the bleating of the insecure, desperate for acceptance by the chronically shallow. ”

“Make up is generally there to make you look better, not make you look like you're wearing make up.”

“So which hand?” Van asked him. “I’m being really nice giving you an option.”“Jesus! You’re gonna break my fucking hand?”“I told you I would. Maybe next time you’ll think twice about hitting a girl.”“You don’t even know what the fuck hap—”“Which hand?” Van growled again. “Five, four, three…”

“I hate to think of you stuck here all day every day, doing nothing with that brilliant brain of yours.”“It never was brilliant. Anyway, who keeps these books to see who’s used themselves wisely and who’s wasted?”

“I can think of something else that would make me feel even better.”She raised her eyebrows. “Oh?” With a nod he gave her a wicked smile. “Yeah. It’s warm…and it feels really good when I’m in it…and I love how it’s always wet for me…”“You think so, huh?” she smirked.“Well yeah. A shower is usually wet when I—”She slugged him in the shoulder and he laughed out loud."Van!”

“I probably reread novels more often than I read new ones. The novel form is made for rereading. Novels are by their nature too long, too baggy, too full of things – you can't hold them completely in your mind. This isn't a flaw – it's part of the novel's richness: its length, multiplicity of aspects, and shapelessness resemble the length and shapelessness of life itself. By the time you reach the end of the novel you will have forgotten the beginning and much of what happens in between: not the main outlines but the fine work, the detail and the music of the sentences – the particular words, through which the novel has its life. You think you know a novel so well that there must be nothing left in it to discover but the last time I reread Emma I found a little shepherd boy, brought into the parlour to sing for Harriet when she's staying with the Martin family. I'm sure he was never in the book before.”

“Ally wasn't disappointed in the writers: she hadn't expected anything from them in the first place; it hadn't occurred to her to be interested in writers as individuals beyond their work. To her relief no one whose books she'd read ever came to the centre, although sometimes she had to pretend to have read the writers who did. The writers could be fairly crazy, too; you had to be vigilant not to trip over their vanity or anxiety. Luckily, most of her favourites were dead. (She's the one, 151)”