“My teachers could have been Jesse James for all the time they stole from me.”

“The women in my life have all been librarians, English teachers, or booksellers. If they couldn't speak pidgin Tolstoy, articulate Henry James, or give me directions to Usher and Ox, it was no go. I have always longed for education, and pillow talk's the best.”

“Time is now measured from the night when death stole from me, took my battered heart, and left me behind.”

“I don't care what your Oort woman wants you to steal for her," she says. "You already did your worst. You stole what could have been. From me and from yourself. And you can never have it back.”

“It would not be fair to say that the fire stole my faith, since in truth it has been slipping away from me all my life, flipping between my fingers like a shiny little minnow--such a far cry from the trophy salmon that dangled from my father's fist.”

“I should have liked to have had him beside me in a glass coffin, so that I could watch him all the time and he would not have been able to get away from me.”