“Sit. I can't flirt standing up, and you're freakishly tall.”

“Absolutely no slouching, Ed. You're the frame. You're the stem to my flower. Quit giving me crooked pictures and wilted flowers.”

“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.”

“You can't say that you need to burn witches and shun gay men but eat pork and wear all the mixed fibers you want!!”

“What if his advisor found out? Would getting caught having public sex do something to his teaching assistantship? Would he still be able to get a job? Would getting felt up in a laundromat inadvertently lead to him living on the streets, starving and exposed, selling his body for sex, which meant he would contract a disease and die?”

“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.”

“Louisa raised an eyebrow. "Is he—how shall I put it delicately—a simple man?”