“It was the first time I had ever made love. I wondered if he knew that. It felt like crying. I wondered, Why does anyone ever make love?”

“I would have done anything for him. Maybe that was my sickness. We made love in nothing places and turned the lights off. It felt like crying. We could not look at each other. It always had to be from behind. Like that first time. And I knew he wasn't thinking of me.He squeezed my sides so hard, and pushed so hard. Like he was trying to push me through to somewhere else.Why does anyone ever make love?”

“I wondered if she knew that everything she said made the other person feel like an idiot. I wondered if it was something she'd actually cultivated deliberately. I didn't think I could ever manage to make someone feel inferior.”

“I wonder if anyone can ever succeed in making their children content.”

“I find myself wondering why—out of all the people in all the world I could ever have loved—I had to fall in love with someone who was taken away from me.”

“Sometimes I imagined stitching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love? Why does anyone ever make love?”