“At some point he realized that he knew howshe felt—once you know how much you love someone, no one else would do.”

“It was freaky how once you realized you loved someone, and they felt the same way about you, they could look different, yet the same; how they felt familiar, but not.”

“How do you know you're not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: 'I like strong women.' If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because 'I like strong women' is code for: 'I hate strong women.”

“She didn't know how much she'd been hoping that he still loved her, until she felt how much it hurt to realize he didn't.”

“Finally, when someone asked [Pollack] how he knew when a painting was finished, he replied, “How do you know when you’ve finished making love?”

“A schlemihl is a schlemihl. What can you "make" out of one? What can one make out of himself? You reach a point, and Profane knew he had reached it, where you know how much you can and cannot do. But every now and again he got attacks of acute optimism.”