“She won't give him back his look.”

“Weeks later, she said: 'The guy was about middle-aged. All his things right there in his yard. No lie. We got real pissed and danced. In the driveway. Oh, my God. Don't laugh. He played us these records. Look at this record-player. The old guy gave it to us. And all these crappy records. Will you look at this shit?' She kept talking. She told everyone. There was more to it, and she was trying to get it talked out. After a time, she quit trying”

“It's akin to style, what I'm talking about, but it isn't style alone. It is the writer's particular and unmistakable signature on everything he writes. It is his world and no other. This is one of the things that distinguishes one writer from another. Not talent. There's plenty of that around. But a writer who has some special way of looking at things and who gives artistic expression to that way of looking: that writer may be around for a time.”

“Mel thought real love was nothing less than spiritual love. He'd said he'd spent five years in a seminary before quitting to go to medical school. He said he still looked back on those years in the seminary as the most important years of his life.”

“In short, everything about his life was different for him at the bottom of that well.”

“She serves me a piece of it a few minutesout of the oven. A little steam risesfrom the slits on top. Sugar and spice -cinnamon - burned into the crust.But she's wearing these dark glassesin the kitchen at ten o'clockin the morning - everything nice -as she watches me break offa piece, bring it to my mouth,and blow on it. My daughter's kitchen,in winter. I fork the pie inand tell myself to stay out of it.She says she loves him. No waycould it be worse.”

“Well, the husband was very depressed for the longest while. Even after he found out that his wife was going to pull through, he was still very depressed. Not about the accident, though. I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn't everything. I'd get up to his mouth-hole, you know, and he'd say no, it wasn't the accident exactly but it was because he couldn't see her through his eye-holes. He said that was what was making him feel bad. Can you imagine? I'm telling you, the man's heart was breaking because he couldn't turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife.”