“I consider giving her crap about her lack of organizational skills, but decided not to. It took some major balls to be alone with a punk like me.”

“In a few more days I'd anticipated telling Veronika that our injections had cured her heart condition. But in light of her unscheduled departure form Villette my telling that particular lie will not be required. The majority of people who attempt suicide repeat that attempt until they succeed. I took a risk in lying to her about her condition, i decided to test the only remedy i have come to have any faith in: awareness of life. Until she finds out from some other doctor that she is perfectly healthy. She'll consider each day a miracle. Which in my view it is.”

“Marriage felt like a fading American institution, as relevant to me as the Elks Club. Plus, I considered myself punk rock, and punk rockers don't believe in boring societal conventions like marriage. We prefer boring societal conventions like punk rock.”

“I asked her if she’d give me all her love, and she flatly said no. I got excited because while she said she wouldn’t give me all her love, she said nothing about not wanting to give me some of her love.”

“Kyle had to give her credit; it took skill—plus noheart and a serious abuse of the English language—to break up with someone in fewer than 140characters.”

“I took Punk to be the detonation of some slow-fused projectile buried deep in society's flank a decade earlier, and I took it to be, somehow, a sign.”