“What she needs,' Tom said aloud 'is a husband.' Agnes said crisply, 'Well, she can't have mine.”

“I said, "Do you think she thinks it's me?"Jas said, "Well, it's pretty conclusive, isn't it? She said 'the most sniveling idiot I have ever come across.'"I said, "I didn't know that YOU have been seeing Masimo. Tom the Slug King is going to be very upset.”

“On-yez, where are you from, dear?' asked a black-slacked, frosted-haired woman whose skin was papery and melanomic with suntan. 'Originally.' She eyed Agnes's outfit as if it might be what in fact it was: a couple of blue things purchased in a department store in Cedar Rapids. Where am I from?' Agnes said it softly. 'Iowa.' She had a tendency not to speak up. Where?' the woman scowled, bewildered. Iowa,' Agnes repeated loudly. The woman in black touched Agnes's wrist and leaned in confidentially. She moved her mouth in a concerned and exaggerated way, like an exercise. 'No, dear,' she said. 'Here we say O-hi-o.”

“Harriet was silent, thinking, and then she said, "It is too hard to be a person. You don't only have to go on and on. You have to be--" she looked for the word she needed and could not find it. Then, "You have to be tall as well," said Harriet.”

“Carpe Jugulum," read Agnes aloud. "That's... well, Carpe Diem is 'Sieze the Day,' so this means-" "Go for the throat”

“She said, "Do you have more things that you need, or more that you don't need?" I said, "It depends on what it means to need.”