“It was a full Spears album, apparently, and each song was as ridiculous as the one before. They were catchy, yes, but so was the plague.”

“After several minutes, Ed said, his voice raspy and spent, "You okay, Laur?"Laurie, his bones melted, his muscles slack, his heart pounding like a happy caged beast against the wall of his chest, his backside throbbing and still half-full of Ed, let out his breath. With great effort, he nodded.”

“I was feeling like all that crazy sea inside me was settling into a calm. He had drawn it all out of the bottle I kept it in, but when I looked up at him like that, it settled, because if my wild insides were a sea, those gray eyes were the world's biggest fucking bowl, and they held me. Caught me and held me and bore me up.”

“How did I know? Paul, I've known since you were eight and I caught you masturbating in front of the TV to Bo and Luke Duke.”

“This was something he'd done a great deal of when he was very young, so young the memory was washed to sepia with age.”

“He wondered if this, more than guilt, was what had been holding him back. It wasn't that he was punishing himself as much as it was that he didn't really want anything anymore. But was that true? Did he really not want anything? What did he want to do? What did he want, period?”

“I can win anytime. Kevin's going to go back to Burbank and tell everybody in his cubicle how he won at the Golden Nugget. Sometimes the pot isn't the money.”