“If I had to ask him to ask me, it wasn't going to work as an expression of concern. Like when you ask someone if they love you - if you have to ask them, they don't. Or not enough. Not the way you want them to.”

“I don't want you to be interested in my life. I want you to be interested in me.”

“It made me realize how unimaginative I had always been about battered wives. Disaster creeps up, a tidal wave on the tourist beach. By the time you can see it, you are powerless or unable to resist it and it rolls you up and away.”

“I wake in the night. Or sometimes I don't wake in the night. It hardly seems to make a difference.”

“And I didn't need telepathy, either. Ask any woman you're ever had a relationship with: I guarantee she knew she was second best. A placeholder, till the one you actually wanted came home.”

“In every way that mattered, we lost and we lost big. Some people are little Chernobyls, shimmering with silent, spreading poison: get anywhere near them and every breath you take will wreck you from the inside out. Some cases--ask any cop--are malignant and incurable, devouring everything they touch.”

“If you want to freak someone out, don't ask them... What's the least you can do? Instead ask them... What's the most you can do?”