“If there's a sexier sound on this planet than the person you're in love with cooing over the crepes you made for him, I don't know what it is.”

“You know that dejection that comes upon you when you realize that the person you're talking to might as well be from Jupiter, for all the chance you have of making them get what you're saying? I hate that.”

“Julia taught me what it takes to find your way in the world. It's not what I thought it was. I thought it wa all about-I don't know, confidence or will or luck. Those are all some good things to have, no question. But there's something else, somethng that these things grow out of. It's joy.”

“One theory on cannibals, of course, is that they eat parts of their slain enemies to benefit from that person's greatest assets - their strength, their courage. Then there’s that thing they do in Germany. You heard about that, didn’t you? Some man over there agreed to let another man cut off his penis, cook it, then feed it to him – now, what in hell was that all about? What did he think the taste of his stir-fried cock would tell him about himself? Was he seeking to wring one last drop of pleasure out of the thing? (Goodness, that’s an unnecessarily vivid metaphor.) But somehow – I said this over dinner – this steak with beef marrow sauce, it didn’t seem that different. “It’s like eating life. It’s almost like eating my own life, you know?”No, not really. But it’s a hell of a good steak, sis.”

“I took a bite of lobster meat with rice. It was quite tasty. 'Arguing the morality of slaughter will send you into a tailspin of self-loathing every time.' 'Unless you're a vegan.' 'Uh-huh. But then you're a vegan and you don't count.”

“When I got home I peered down at the lobster to see how he was doing. The inner plastic bag was sucked tight around him and clouded up. It looked like something out of an eighties made-for-TV movie, with some washed-up actress taking too many pills and trying to off herself with a Macy's bag.”

“I love my husband like a pig loves shit.”