“I would not regret putting a hole in your arrogant chest, only it would be deflected when it hit that piece of rock you call a heart.”

“From Laurie Colwin: Lovely writing! About grief she writes: "I realized that grief is metabolic: it crawls through you like a disease and takes your energy away. Then it gathers and hits like a sudden migraine, like being hit by a car, like having a large, flat rock hurled at your chest.”

“The body lay outside an abandoned, boarded-up theater. The theater had started as a first-run movie house, many years back when the neighborhood had still been fashionable. As the neighborhood began rotting, the theater began showing second-run films, and then old movies, and finally foreign-language films.”

“If I could really love, I would take awaythese tubes dripping lipids and glucoseinto your blood. I would liquefy the thingsyou love and flood them through your veins:our sleeping dogs' rhythmic breathing, hugeorange trumpets of the amaryllis we thoughtwould never bloom, the crunch of the gravelroad coming home. If I could really love,I would climb onto your narrow backand wrap myself around, guarding likea ladybug, or Achilles' mighty shield.”

“If I told you, you'd only know it in your mind, not in your heart. There's a big difference.”

“Wait,” Wes says. “Are you to imply that our dear Chameleon is once again having premonitions by way of pottery?”“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t call me reptilian names,” I say.“Would you prefer it if I called you a freak?”

“I would hit you on the head with a rock and drag you away from this. But it would only shatter the rock.”