“...underneath that I'd said something else: we were both a couple of asswipes, and now only I'm an asswipe; why? And underneath that, something else: once an asswipe, always an asswipe.”

“Some mythological fat asswipe drives our national economy.”

“There are four kinds of people to avoid in the world: the assholes, the asswipes, the ass-kissers, and those that just will shit all over you.”

“Where had he been? Drinking, obviously. Then she started cataloging all the ways he was worthless. On fool impulse, as his most potent available argument against Lily, Bud stuck his hands into his coat pockets and pulled out the many bundles of hundreds and threw them on the bedspread. If you were honest and stupid, you worked a couple of lifetimes for that kind of money, doled out by the hour in pocket-change amounts by asswipe bosses.”

“I tried to think of something good to ask of him. “Do you always do this?Rescue girls from embarrassment?”Surprise flickered across his face and then there was something else I couldn’t recognize.“No..” he said softly. “Not always.”There was something in the way he said that, which felt like there was something else underneath the words I wasn’t catching.”

“I’d stare up at the sky, reminding myself that Caleb and I were both underneath it. That wherever he was, whatever he was doing, we would always share something.”