“There's nothing more embarrassing than to have earned the disfavor of a perceptive animal.”

“It struck me that the chief obstacle to marital contentment was this perpetual gulf between the well-founded, commendable pessimism of women and the sheer dumb animal optimism of men, the latter a force more than any other responsible for the lamentable state of the world.”

“... and because it was a drunken perception, it was perfect, entire, and lasted about half a second.”

“Take care-there is no force more powerful than that of an unbridled imagination.”

“And yet in her eyes there was something unreadable, something that did not want to be read, the determined blankness that in predator animals conceals hostile calculation and in prey forms part of an overwhelming effort to seem to have disappeared.”

“I hate it that they even count errors,' Ethan said. . . . 'What kind of game is that? No other sport do they do that, Dad. There's no other sport where they put the errors on the freaking scoreboard for everybody to look at. They don't even have errors in other sports. They have fouls. They have penalties. Those are things that players could get on purpose, you know. But in baseball they keep track of how many accidents you have.'* * *Errors . . . Well, they are a part of life, Ethan,' he tried to explain. 'Fouls and penalties, generally speaking, are not. That's why baseball is more like life than other games. Sometimes I feel like that's all I do in life, keep track of my errors.'But Dad, you're a grown-up,' Ethan reminded him. 'A kid's life isn't supposed to be that way.”

“Julie wanted to die of his own whiteness, to be drowned in the tide of his embarrassment on behalf of all uncool white people everywhere when they tried to be cool.”