“You were always uncomfortable with the rhetoric of emotion, which is quite a different matter from discomfort with emotion itself.”

“The word love was required to cover such a range of emotions that it almost meant nothing at all. Since the love we distill for each beloved conforms to such a specific, rarefied recipe, with varying soupcons of resentment, pity, or lust, and sometimes even pinches of dislike, you really needed as many different words for the feeling as there were people whom you cared for in your life.”

“Discomfort begets discomfort in others.”

“But I was beginning to intuit that full-blown maturity was not so very different from childhood. Both states in their extreme were all about following the rules.”

“He looks uncomfortable, and in this respect the garb is apt. Kevin is uncomfortable; the tiny clothing replicates the same constriction that he feels in his own skin.”

“We'd been assured it wouldn't be painful, though she might experience 'discomfort,' a term beloved of the medical profession that seems to be a synonym for agony that isn't yours.”

“Maybe it was different for you and Valerie, since you didn't like each other much. But many, perhaps most siblings share a private universe tropical with benevolence, betrayal, vendetta, reconciliation, and the use and abuse of power of which their parents know practically nothing.”