“I felt I couldn't lose anything else, but just then I realized I already had: I'd lost the hope that I would ever be loved in just that way again.”

“She seems sort of lost.'I thought, Lost how? How am I lost? Suddenly I felt lost.”

“Later, lying in bed, I wonder if Dena knows about her father. I decide that she probably does, and I imagine how I would feel if I knew that my father was unfaithful to my mother.Then I remember Richard, and I think that marriage might not mean much to Dena. I can't really blame her: She learned about marriage from her parents, just as I did from mine. For all I know, sleeping with Richard is just Dena's way of trying not to be her mother.”

“It reminded me of how I’d felt applying to college. Night after night, I sat with my father in his study while he read aloud from Baron’s. He’d read the name of the college, the number of men and the number of women, and a description in guidebook prose; then he’d say, ‘How does that sound?’ and I’d think, Sounds just like the last one.It took me a few nights to realize that my father was reading only the colleges that I had some chance of getting into – not Brown but Bowling Green; not Wesleyan but Ohio Wesleyan; not Williams or Smith, but William Smith. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that my grades and test scores over the years were anything more than individual humiliations; I hadn’t realized that one day all of them would add up and count against me.”

“Up until that moment, I'd been at the earliest stage of love, when you feel it will turn you into the better person you want to be. Now, his gentle voice and sage advice took me to a later stage: I felt I needed to pretend to be a better person than I was so he'd keep loving me. This was hard because it made me hate him.”

“I want him to tell my why, but he doesn't say anything. It seems possible that Matthew is gay and possible that he isn't; possible that he is just a little more afraid than the rest of us and possible that he is much more; it even seems possible that what he has with Dena is bigger or deeper or more important than anything else is to him. I don't know, But i no longer believe, as I did that last afternoon at the lake, that my many, many flaws are what prevented Matthew from wanting a life with me. It seems more likely that it is his flaw that he can't or won't love anyone-- and that he is indiscriminate in his unlove.”

“I have acute pancreatitis.""I thought it was just average looking.”