“Aye, we all know your fondness for apples, brother.”

“Your heart, Mary Karr, he'd say. His pen touched my sternum, and it felt for all the world like the point of a dull spear as he said, Your heart knows what your head don't. Or won't.”

“The fact is that Santa and Satan are alter egos, brothers; they have the same origin.”

“I swear I won’t stop until your legs are shaking and every hotel guest on this floor knows my name.”

“The trick in that town was getting through a night at all without stalling in the sludge of your own thoughts.”

“After Mother got her picture, we all stood around the fire truck eating moon-shaped cookies dusted with powdered sugar that the mayor's wife had brought in some Tupperware. It was stuff like that that'd break your heart about Leechfield, what Daddy meant when he said the town was too ugly not to love.”

“Those are only rumors of suffering. Real suffering has a face and a smell. It lasts in the most intense form no matter what you drape over it. And it knows your name.”