“It was like autumn, looking at her. it was like driving up north to see the colors.”

“When I think back about my immediate reaction to that redheads girl, it seems to spring from an appreciation of natural beauty. I mean the heart pleasure you get from looking at speckled leaves or the palimpsested bark of plane trees in Provence. There was something richly appealing to her color combination, the ginger snaps floating in the milk-white skin, the golden highlights in the strawberry hair. it was like autumn, looking at her. It was like driving up north to see the colors.”

“I ask mostly to see if I can get her to blush ten shades deeper, see if the color would bleed down her neck and light up her boobs like a pair of Christmas ornaments.”

“On the drive up here, I saw a goose," he says. "A Canada goose. Fred told me they shit something horrible. They migrate between the north and the south, don't they? Like seniors.”

“for her, life was as cold as an attic with a window looking to the north, and ennui, like a spider, was silently spinning its shadowy web in every cranny of her heart.”

“She looked like autumn, when leaves turned and fruit ripened.”