“There was no other way to say it. After being heartbroken for so long, I had made myself completely numb inside. Maybe not from physical pain, but anything emotional, yes. Sexual pleasure? Numb to that, too. I’d have been a great actress. After all, I had the perfect, mind-blowing orgasm down to an art. Suppose I deserve an Oscar for that.”

“He was numb: heart-numb, mind-numb, soul-numb. And the numbness, he realized, went a long way down, and a long way back.”

“Living it up to me meant getting drunk...; it meant losing myself in anything that could take the past away. I wanted to be numb; I wanted to never feel again. After all that had happened in the last couple years, I just wanted a way to forget it all.”

“I’ve perfected the art of the fake smile. It’s not so difficult when you are completely numb.”

“The doctor’s words made me understand what happened to me was a dark, evil, and shameful secret, and by association I too was dark, evil, and shameful. While it may not have been their intention, this was the message my clouded mind received. To escape the confines of the hospital, I once again disassociated myself from my emotions and numbed myself to the pain ravaging my body and mind. I acted as if nothing was wrong and went back to performing the necessary motions to get me from one day to the next. I existed but I did not live.”

“I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after Ihad children I would feel differently, I wouldn't want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state.”