“Dating's all about giving you chances to bump and brush and touch and, occasionally, talk.”

“There's three things I've seen in this world that seem to make a body happy or miserable. It's no money or health or any of those other things most people talk about. It's knowing where you fit in this world, being able to go after your dreams, and love.”

“She'd stand on her own two feet if she had to crawl.”

“If nobody talks about books, if they are not discussed or somehow contended with, literature ceases to be a conversation, ceases to be dynamic. Most of all, it ceases to be intimate. It degenerates into a monologue or a mutter. An unreviewed book is a struck bell that gives no resonance. Without reviews, literature would be oddly mute in spite of all those words on all those pages of all those books. Reviewing makes of reading a participant sport, not a spectator sport.”

“A year will pass, and then another and things will keep on changing. The only thing we can all do is accept what we have no control over, and find the people willing to do anything in their power to smooth out the bumps in the boat and bob along with you through the waves. Because there is always someone willing to throw out a life jacket.”

“Then Carol slipped her arm under her neck, and all the length of their bodies touched fitting as if something had prearranged it. Happiness was like a green vine spreading through her, stretching fine tendrils, bearing flowers through her flesh. She had a vision of a pale white flower, shimmering as if seen in darkness, or through water. Why did people talk of heaven, she wondered”

“His heart's occupied elsewhere," said Ben from behind me. "And even if it weren't he's not interested in your kind. But, I'm available and ready.""You don't have a heart," I told him. "Just a gaping hole where it should have been.""All the more reason for you to give me yours."I pounded my forehead against Warren 's back. "Tell me Ben's not flirting with me.""Hey," said Ben sounding hurt. "I was talking cannibalism, not romance.”