“Vierte amor en las heridas.”

“La calidad de una cena la determinan las conversaciones secundarias que la mayoría de la mesa no oye.”

“I raised that kid like I was running an egg-and-spoon race through a minefield, and he was the egg.”

“My inner chemistry had been hijacked by a mad scientist, who poured the fizzy, volatile contents of my heart from a test tube marked SOBER REALITY into another labeled SUNNY DELUSION, and back again, faster and faster, until the floor of my life was slick with spillage.”

“My heart, to put it more simply, got nostalgic for the present. Always a bad sign.”

“My heart and the elevator, a plummet inside a plummet.”

“The waiting area was jammed with the sort of egalitarian cross-section only genuine misery can provide: Hispanics and blacks and Russians and various indeterminate, red-eyed teenage girls with children you prayed were siblings; junkie veterans petitioning for painkillers they wouldn't get;”