“And when she talks of Carrie White her face takes on an odd pinched look that is more like Lovecraft out of Arkham than Kerouac out of Southern Cal.”

“…when you talk about Mike, you look like a woman who’s talkin’ about a guy she likes. You talk about Cal, you look like a woman who’s talkin’ about the man she needs to breathe.”

“...she talked in one of her memoirs of ignoring her little brother when she was supposed to be looking after him: "I liked reading a book much more than I liked looking after him (and even now I like reading a book more than I like looking after my own children...)”

“Bran was stripping her futon down to the bare mattress when she entered her apartment. It was sort of like watching the president mowing the White House lawn or taking out the trash.”

“And when she started becoming a “young lady,” and no one was allowed to look at her because she thought she was fat. And how she really wasn’t fat. And how she was actually very pretty. And how different her face looked when she realized boys thought she was pretty. And how different her face looked the first time she really liked a boy who was not on a poster on her wall. And how her face looked when she realized she was in love with that boy. I wondered how her face would look when she came out from behind those doors.”

“I used to be a good fighter." She looks out along the boxwoods, wipes off her sweat with her palm. "If you'd known me ten years ago..."She's got no goo on her face, her hair's not sprayed, her nightgown's like an old prairie dress. She takes a deep breath through her nose and I see it. I see the white-trash girl she was ten years ago. She was strong. She didn't take no shit from nobody.”