“Winter is the season of alcoholism and despair.”

“He left in a state of distraction and a winter coat.”

“The world, a tired performer, offers us another half-assed season.”

“Everyone struggles against despair, but it always wins in the end. It has to. It's the thing that lets us say goodbye.”

“After all the screaming in our house, there reigned, that winter on Middlesex, only silence. A silence so profound that, like the left foot of the President’s secretary, it erased portions of the official record.”

“As one does the return of sun after winter, I stood still and accepted the warm glow of possibility, of feeling right in the company of this small, oddly fierce person, with the inky hair and the lovely, unemphasized body.”

“All sixteen mentioned her jutting ribs, the insubstantiality of her thighs, and one, who went up to the roof with Lux during a warm winter rain, told us how the basins of her collarbones collected water.”