“But in the wake of 'Bullet,' all the guys wanted to know was, 'How's it doing? How's it selling?' How to tell them I didn't give a flying fuck how it was doing in the marketplace, that what I cared about was how it was doing in the reader's heart?”

“Fuck, she was so sick of herself-herself and her fucking emotional retardation. How did people do this shit all the time, this wanting people, caring about them? How did they stand it, how did they ever get anything done? She was sick of being lost.”

“He gives me a kiss that barely touches my lips – it means nothing or everything. After he’s gone, I think, Happy birthday to me.Jack says, ‘That was the guy?’‘That was him.’Jake shakes his head.‘What?’‘He’s not for you,’ he says.I say, ‘How do you know?’ but what I mean is, How do you know?‘He’s like Ashley Wilkes,’ he says. ‘Any one of these guys is Rhett-ier than he is.’Again, I ask my benignly inflected, ‘How do you know?’‘How do I know?’ he says, tackling me into a bear hug. ‘How do I know? I know, that’s how I know.”

“Well, I don't know as I want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell how to do what I want to do.”

“How do you not try to get something you want?How do you stop caring about the thing that you care about the most?How do you erase the other half of your own self?”

“I care so much that I do not know how to tell you without seeming inconsequential compared to how I feel. Even if I am distant at times and seem as if I do not want to be with you, it is only because this scares me, too.”