“Art directors speak in pictures. If you want an art director to understand what you're saying, you need to draw some lines and circles on a piece of paper.”

“Dead strangers evoked a smorgasbord of the lesser emotions and served as marvelous educational tools, warnings, and veiled threats. When an acquaintance was killed, it was closer to home; one knew some of the threads that tied the deceased to a common humanity. Without enough real connection to grieve, one was left in an uncomfortable place between curiosity and embarrassment.”

“The gyms you go to are crowded with guys trying to look like men, as if being a man means looking the way a sculptor or art director says.Like Tyler says, even a souffle looks pumped.”

“Deliberately, she took a long drink. It wasn't as good as she remembered, but then little was. She caught herself in that thought and was ashamed. Cynicism was okay, bitterness a pain in the neck. The hairline difference between the two was hope and humor. The cynic had both, the embittered, nothing.”

“Hers was an evil-sounding chuckle that Anna loved. The sort of chortle Dorothy might have heard shortly before all hell broke loose in the land of Oz”

“perhaps love was like the mumps. If a woman came down with it after forty, it could kill her”

“Gossip, unless aimed or honed sharp like a weapon, was natural to human beings. It showed interestin oe's fellows, interest in the well being of the tribe. "Gossip was a way to learn taboos, pass on warnings, share the burden fo being human among many so the onus of bearing it alone would fall on no one person. " Molly said. From an Anna Pigeon Novel”