“But here is the thing. When he gets on me, I suddenly feel I am fat. I feel am terrifically fat, so fat that Rudy is a tiny thing and hardly there at all.”

“But I can hardly sit still. I keep fidgeting, crossing one leg and then the other. I feel like I could throw off sparks, or break a window--maybe rearrange all the furniture.”

“All this, all of this love we're talking about, it would just be a memory. Maybe not even a memory. Am I wrong? Am I way off base? Because I want you to set me straight if you think I'm wrong. I want to know. I mean, I don't know anything, and I'm the first one to admit it.”

“Late FragmentAnd did you get whatyou wanted from this life, even so?I did.And what did you want?To call myself beloved, to feel myselfbeloved on the earth.”

“I am a cigarette with a body attached to it”

“I've crossed some kind of invisible line. I feel as if I've come to a place I never thought I'd have to come to. And I don't know how I got here. It's a strange place. It's a place where a little harmless dreaming and then some sleepy, early-morning talk has led me into considerations of death and annihilation.”

“I am too nervous to eat pie.”