“These flies were half the size of my fist. They came at you and stuck to you with a single-minded purpose you had to admire. We were hopelessly outnumbered, but we still slapped and kicked and karate-chopped ourselves until we reached an uneasy truce.”

“Bizzy laughed at the very thought of bumblebees walking on their tiny feet from flower to flower! “We bumblebees have always been able to fly,” explained Bizzy. We fly because we have a job to do. We fly because we think we can. What about you, delicate dandelion?” Bizzy asked the flower, who had up until now had not spoken a single word. “What do you do? What is your purpose?”

“Let's do it then." I reached forward and poked his bare chest with two fingers like we were actors in a gangster movie. "You and me,on the slopes, head-to-head,the slalom and the half-pipe.I will kick." Poke. "Your." Poke. "Ass.”

“My parents stood still. It was like we were on two separate islands. Mom and Dad were on one, and I was on the other. And the ocean between us was the symbol of truth. The thing representing our truce.”

“we had made love without love, half-dressed most of the time and always in the dark so we could imagine ourselves as better than we were.”

“The most important single thing we had to pound into ourselves is that we were not important, we musn't be pedants; we were not to feel superior to anyone else in the world. We're nothing more than dust jackets for books, of no significance otherwise.”