“Two adolescent girls on a hot summer night--hardly the material of great literature, which tends to endow all male experience (that of those twin brothers who found themselves adrift so many years ago in the dark northern woods for instance) with universal radiance. Faithless sons, wars and typhoons, fields of blood, greed and knives: our literature's full of such stories. And yet suppose for an instant that it wasn't the complacent father but his bored daughter who was the Prime Mover; suppose that what came first wasn't an appetite for drama but the urge to awaken it. Mightn't we then permit a single summer in the lives of two bored girls to represent an essential stage in the history of the universe?”

“Prue hadn't really been in love with Fabian. Indeed, it was obvious that at times she found him both boring and irritating. But wasn't that what so many marriages were - finding a person boring and irritating and yet loving him? Who could imagine a man who was never boring, or irritating?”

“Younger than Morini and Pelletier, Espinoza studied Spanish literature, not German literature, at least for the first two years of his university career, among other sad reasons because he dreamed of being a writer.”

“and i am a boy waiting-for the heat and fruitfulness of summer,waiting to see who will walk out of those woods for me. Waiting for my lovely summer girl”

“I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored. Peoples bore me, literature bores me, especially great literature, ”

“It was supposedly a scorching hot summer, but since I'm such a hermit, I really didn't notice. In fact, the last time I went to the beach was almost ten years ago.”