“Then we all sat around; we were supposed to be awed. I was brattishly unawed.”

“He says nothing, vehemently. I falter away and we sit, mutually staring into the fouled water. ...With time to kill, I ponder dismally the possible derivation of the zombie myth from people like my boyfriend. I picture Ralph blackened, semi-fingered, with bright bone peeking through his flesh. The odd small worm clings, festively wiggling. In my image, Ralph's really upset about decaying, and I feel for him sorrowfully. I want to tell him I would still love him, if he were decomposed. Of course in practice there is no predicting what I'd feel, and besides which, it's a wild associative leap.I ponder dismally how I've alienated people, all my life, with my bizarre associative leaps. ”

“Examining the actual contents of my crying, I found a quailing sludge emotion, with a foul insecticide taste. If it was a peanut, you would spit it out. Yet I was indulging this toxic goo, giving it its head and letting it dictate my actions. People had every good reason to despise me. ”

“Giving a reader a sex scene that is only half right is like giving her half a kitten. It is not half as cute as a whole kitten; it is a bloody, godawful mess. A half-good sex scene is not half as hot; it actually moves into the negative numbers, draining any heat from the surrounding material.”

“That sense of the world being the lack of something dogged him for years, and when it stopped dogging him, he felt unmoored. ”

“You are thinking of the past." I put my arms around her. She'd risen from childbed too soon. "We are the past," she said.”

“I lowered myself into an armchair. I was enveloped in a cloud of dust. All that remained of my life was in my lap. I sat for a time thus, as still as the mute objects that surrounded me. How little it all meant, in the end.”