“It was an indulgence, learning last words. Other people had chocolate; I had dying declarations.”

“The last declaration he'd made to me hung between us. The L word. The one that had nothing to do with like.”

“...but with the hours I sometimes kept at the coffeehouse I had to have learned to take naps during the day or die, and I had learned to take naps. Up until five months ago "something or other or die" had always seemed like a plain choice in favor of the something or other.”

“I had declared in public my desire to be a writer ... I wanted to develop a curiosity that was oceanic and insatiable as well as a desire to learn and use every word in the English language that didn't sound pretentious or ditzy.”

“I had the taste of blood and chocolate in my mouth, one as hated as the other.”

“I had learned many times that the more you try to get people to deny their illusions, the stronger the illusions can become. But if you indulge those delusions instead, they often fall apart on their own.”