“It was as hysterical as a woman having a hot flash.”

“He began to cry, not hysterically or screaming as people cry when concealed rage with tears, but with continuous sobs who has just discovered that he's alone and will be for long. He cried because safety and reason seemed to have left the world. Loneliness was a reality, but in this situation madness was also remotely a possibility.”

“In the stutter-flashes of light, the clouds look like huge transparent brains filled with bad thoughts.”

“Sometimes you have to be a high-riding bitch to survive. Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold onto.”

“McVries seemed not to have heard. "These things, they don't even bear the weight of conversation," he said, "J.D. Salinger...John Knowles...even James Kirkwood and that guy Don Bredes...they've destroyed being an adolescent, Garraty. If you're a sixteen-year-boy, you can't discuss the pains of adolescent love with any decency anymore. You just come off sounding like fucking Ron Howard with a hardon."McVries laughed a little hysterically.”

“Lightning flashed dully inside the clouds on the horizon making them look as if they had fireflies of their own, monster fireflies the size of dinosaurs.”

“Life turns on a dime. Sometimes towards us, but more often it spins away, flirting and flashing as it goes: so long, honey, it was good while it lasted, wasn’t it?”