“Rachel, we've been over this. This is what I do," he said, crumbs of whiten cheese falling from the knife. "Find a way for your lofty, unrealistic ideals to deal with it.”

“Rachel could sell cheese to vegans.”

“Am I sounding creepy? Love is sort of creepy. When you fall in love, you presuppose all sorts of things about the person. You superimpose all kinds of ideals and fantasies on them. You create all manner of unrealistic, untenable, unsatisfiable criteria for that person, automatically guaranteeing their failure and your heartbreak. And what do we call it? Romance. Now that’s creepy.”

“Your neck smells like cheese,' I said.'Oh,' He said, 'that's my cheese cologne. I have a whole selection. Chedder, American, Swiss.”

“Catch from the board of beauty/ Such careless crumbs as fall.”

“I leaned across the table towards the crumb-thrower. "Do that again," I said, loud enough to be heard over the opera singer, Dolly, my mother, and the smell of the breadsticks, "and I will sell your firstborn child to the devil.”