“They hurt me, these small, brutal kindnesses.”

“A monkey could do my job better and with more hilarious results.”

“Seeing his face after months was as immediate as a pointed gun.”

“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.”

“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.”

“That can be the cruelest part of happiness--its tendency to disguise itself as boredom.”

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