“I needed to take her to a concert, or maybe invite her out to go stencil street art in the middle of the night. Except I hadn’t done that since middle school. And I’m not exactly Banksy with a can of spray paint.”

“Since pigs are anatomically similar to humans, dissecting one must be like cutting up a midget. And I haven’t done that since middle school.”

“Backstage passes at a middle school choir concert. I hang with a crew who knows how to live.”

“Helen's books were her friends, "the kind you invite for dinner in the middle of winter," she'd told him, " and spend all night talking and never go to bed.”

“Will you teach me how to paint?”“Just paint.”“I’m not any good.”“Do it for therapy. You can go to art school later.”

“The only slight disconcertance being that in the middle of looking at a paintings [in the Museum of Modern Art] she always found herself desperately needing to take a pee. And grandmother's voice in her ear.'My dear, if you really have to, only clean, very clean rest rooms will do.”