“It reminded me of how children always thought too big; how the world tackled and chiseled them to keep them safe.”

“I count too heavily on birthdays, though I know I shouldn't. Inevitably I begin to assess my life by them, figure out how I'm doing by how many people remember; it's like the old fantasy of attending your own funeral: You get to see who your friends are, get to see who shows up. ”

“I always had the sense with her that she didn't suffer fools gladly but that life was taking great pains to show her how.”

“Guns, she was reminded then, were not for girls. They were for boys. They were invented by boys. They were invented by boys who had never gotten over their disappointment that accompanying their own orgasm there wasn't a big boom sound.”

“I don't have a love life. I have a like life.'Mamie smiled. She thought how nice that might be, to be peacefully free from love...”

“(Such a life)engaged gross quantities of hope and despair and set them wildly side by side, like a Third World country of the heart. ”

“the whole idea that people have a clue as to how the world works, is just a piece of laughable metaphysical colonialism perpetrated upon the wild country of time.”