“By fantasizing one builds a more predictable world, and then one has no time to notice what is really happening, because of the din made by one's expectations crashing down.”

“The harmony of two bodies expressed in this single touch, bridging their differences and bending their moral reserve, was as powerful and wild asphysical fulfillment, yet there was nothing false in this harmony, noillusion created that just by touching, our bodies could express feelingsthat rationality prevented us from making permanent; I might even say thatour bodies cooly preserved their good sense, scheming and keeping eachother in check, as if to say, I'll yield unreservedly to the madness ofthe moment but only if and when you do the same; but this physical pleafor passion and reason, spontaneity and calculation, closeness anddistance, took our bodies past the point where, clinging to desire andstriving for the moment of gratification, they would seek a new and more complete harmony.”

“Hardly anything remained of which he could speak aloud.”

“I open it so he has no choice. At the crack of the top and the sound of the fizz he winces like one more Coke down, one less in the world.”

“You can’t expect to conquer the world in one day, you know. All good things will come in time.”

“What did I expect of him? Very little, I promise you. One more dented little face. One more adolescent freak. The usual unusual. One great thing about being in the adjustment business: you're never short of customers.”

“THAT NO ONE knows what happened to Jesus’s foreskin is particularly interesting because there used to be upwards of a dozen in circulation.”