“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“My brother wrote another refrigerator magnet poem, when he was probably nineteen or twenty: 'When the flood comes/ I will swim to a symphony/ go by boat to some picture show/ and maybe I will forget about you.' How did he know way, way back then? How is it I know only now?”

“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.”

“So the end may be a long time coming, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a way of sneaking up on you.”

“If I had thought the beef marrow might be a hell of a lot of work for not much difference, I needn’t have worried. The taste of the marrow is rich, meaty, intense in a nearly-too-much way. In my increasingly depraved state, I could think of nothing at first but that it tasted like really good sex. But there was something more than that, even. What it really tastes like is life, well lived. Of course the cow I got marrow from had a fairly crappy life – lots of crowds and overmedication and bland food that might or might not have been a relative. But deep in his or her bones, there was a capacity for feral joy. I could taste it.”