“Tony knew if he ever needed anything done again, he was calling on the Lesbian Network of Massachusetts. Those girls worked fast. And they were everywhere.”

“He knew it even before he could fully articulate it: between East and West lay a terrain that needed to be charted by stories, fused by his new eyes and imagination, and he needed to tell those stories if he ever hoped to be whole again.”

“In that moment he had loved her far more than he had ever done when they were together and free. Also he knew that somewhere or other she was still alive and needed his help.”

“Steve got that pinched, unhappy look on his face that Tony never knew how to deal with. Most of the time he either threw something more broken than himself in Steve's path and ran, or just offered to buy the Dodgers again. Neither of the gambits worked well, but Tony was out of ideas.”

“He was inefficient in the old sense of the word; not incapable, but unwilling to be seduced by work--unwilling to be singleminded. Those things that needed to be done were constantly put off for those things that needed to be thought about. And unfinished projects did not pester him to be completed, but represented, in themselves, thoughts he had not finished thinking....”

“He was doing Tony’s dirty work, in a way—like Tony had done his in New York. One hand washing the other, neither of them getting clean.”