“You can never be a sexy beast like Melissa and Stefani”

“What was unspoken between us, what need never be explained or said, was that nobody would ever love us again like our mothers did. Yes, we would be loved, by our fathers, our friends, our siblings, our aunts and uncles and grandparents and spouses--and our children if we chose to have them--but never would we experience that kind of unconditional, nothing-you-can-do-will-turn-me-away-from-you kind of mother love.”

“You live, learn, and move on, and there are bumps in the road. Sometimes they seem like we're diving off cliffs without wings. But at least if we try to fly, we have a chance that maybe we can.”

“This is what you remember about him: not much, but then you have been assiduous in your forgetting. His red sweater, v-neck, cashmere; the clink of ice-cubes in a glass. He is shadow and voice, but you cannot recall his face. He is behind a closed door, in a forbidden room. He is asleep in his armchair, he is asleep in the driveway, asleep in your sandpit, face down, snoring but not harmless, even then. He is shouting, he is whispering, he is close but also remote as if at the end of a long hallway and you cannot hear him. His words never make any sense, he speaks some other language. His hands sometimes spin away from him like windmills, like pinwheels and Catherine wheels, snapping like firecrackers. There must be pain, but you cannot feel it.Your skin bruises like apples.”

“how can you read books?”

“He's like a lake. You assume it has great depths, pure undisturbed undiscoverable depths. You assume depths must be there because the surface is so flat--pretty and flat and utterly unrevealing. Boring almost, you might say, if you didn't know about the depths, that is, if you didn't believe they were there.”

“…I’d let those entering (grad) students in on my secret—higher education is all about perseverance. It has nothing to do with smarts or creativity or anything else. It’s about cultivating the willingness and stamina for hoop jumping. Jump through the hoops, I’d say. Do it well. Do it relentlessly. And in a few years you can join the elite of the American education system secure in the knowledge that you too can endure with the best of them.”