“He gives me a kiss that barely touches my lips – it means nothing or everything. After he’s gone, I think, Happy birthday to me.Jack says, ‘That was the guy?’‘That was him.’Jake shakes his head.‘What?’‘He’s not for you,’ he says.I say, ‘How do you know?’ but what I mean is, How do you know?‘He’s like Ashley Wilkes,’ he says. ‘Any one of these guys is Rhett-ier than he is.’Again, I ask my benignly inflected, ‘How do you know?’‘How do I know?’ he says, tackling me into a bear hug. ‘How do I know? I know, that’s how I know.”

“How do you know me?" she says.He looks at her through his narrow eyes. "I was," he says."You were what?" she asks."I was," he says again. "And now I'm not.”

“...My dad, may he rest in peace, taught me many wonderful things. And one of the things he taught me was never ask a guy what you do for a living. He said "If you think about it, when you ask a guy, what do you do you do for a living," you’re saying "how may I gauge the rest of your utterances." are you smarter than I am? Are you richer than I am, poorer than I am?" So you ask a guy what do you do for a living, it’s the same thing as asking a guy, let me know what your politics are before I listen to you so I know whether or not you’re part of my herd, in which case I can nod knowingly, or part of the other herd, in which case I can wish you dead.”

“…I feel like he’s taking advantage of me. Advantage of my illness. He thinks he can rewrite history in any way that he likes and I will never know, never be any the wiser. But I do know. I know exactly what he’s doing. And so I don’t trust him. In the end he is pushing me away, Dr. Nash. Ruining everything.”

“Angels?' 'You know. The ones in the old stories. How they can fly to heaven.' 'Do you think anyone believes in them anymore?' he asks. 'I don't know. No. Do you?' 'I believe in you.' he says.”

“I think that people don't know how to do anything anymore. My father was a janitor. He could take a car apart and put it back together. He could build a house in the back yard. Today, if you ask people what they know, they say, 'I know how to hire someone.”