“there isn't enough of anythingas long as we live. But at intervalsa sweetness appears and, given a chanceprevails.”

“We knew our days were numbered. We had fouled up our lives and we were getting ready for a shake-up.”

“But I guess even the knights were vessels to someone. Isn't that the way it worked? But then everyone is always a vessel to someone. Isn't that right, Terri? But what I liked about the knights, besides their ladies, was that they had that suit of armor, you know, and they couldn't get hurt very easily. No cars in those days, you know? No drunk teenagers to tear into your ass."Vassals," Terri said.What?" Mel said.Vassals," Terri said. "They were called vassals.”

“It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.”

“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.”

“That was in Crescent City, California, up near the Oregon border. I left soon after. But today I was thinking of that place, of Crescent City, and of how I was trying out a new life there with my wife, and how, in the barber's chair that morning, I had made up my mind to go. I was thinking today about the calm I felt when I closed my eyes and let the barber's fingers move through my hair, the sweetness of those fingers, the hair already starting to grow.”

“You see, this happened a few months ago, but it's still going on right now, and it ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.”