“I didn't understand, either, but love had no sense sometimes. Pondering the why of it was futile.”

“I know you loved me. I just don't understand why you didn't love me enough to stay.”

“I didn't understand the war. It was new, and they all said it would be there for a long time, but where it was, exactly, was one of the things I didn't understand. It seemed to be out-of-doors, and that was why we had the blackout curtains, so that we didn't have to look at it at night–or it didn't have to look at us, perhaps. Yet on some nights we sat on the balcony and watched searchlights play across the dark sky, and that had to do with the war, too. So the war was in the sky, somehow.And it was there in the daytime, though I was not sure where. It was why sometimes, during school, whistles blew, and we had to run to the subway station.”

“It was encouraging to see that she sometimes got things wrong. Tyler's persistence had nothing to do with the accident. She didn't seem to understand the appeal she held for the human boys at the high school. Did she not see the appeal she had for me, either?”

“Ads answered out of desperation in the New York Review of Books proved equally futile as…the 'Bay Area Bisexual' told me I didn't quite coincide with either of her desires.”

“Why did you decide to be an architect?""I didn't know it then. But it's because I've never believed in God.""Come on, talk sense.""Because I love this earth. That's all I love. I don't like the shape of things on this earth. I want to change them.""For whom?""For myself.""How old are you?""Twenty-two.""Where did you hear all that?""I didn't.""Men don't talk like that at twenty-two. You're abnormal.""Probably.""I didn't mean it as a compliment.""I didn't either.”