“He's dead now and by dead I mean dating a stripper.”

“Marcel was from Louisiana, so for four years Emily had been southern by association. She insisted on Lynchburg Lemonades. She scheduled interviews around the Gators. She championed gentility. Anyone at a dinner party who thought they could tell a joke making fun of the region encountered a faceful of Emily, quick and ferocious as a convert, as a woman who loved a man. Emily now had no claim to the South. The region and its interests would proceed without her.”

“I am quitting a boy like some people quit smoking. I am not quitting smoking.”

“Once in a while, I smell Clive on my skin and it stops my day. It's a train crossing; I wait to pass. Eventually the lights stop flashing, the barriers lift. I keep moving.”

“I am bad at asking for help. When you ask a human being for help, there is a chance they will say later, Remember when you asked for help? Can I have five dollars? That goes for medicine, too. I don't like asking help from pills in a bottle. I don't want to be woken up at night by a tab of aspirin asking to borrow five dollars.”

“Bob Dylan never has his own cigarettes. I thought this was charming at first.”

“I was fond of him immediately, in the way we feel kinship to those who compliment us.”