“I'd be a sucker for a guy who wrote me a song,” I said. “Like Beth or Rosanna or Sara. Or Sharona. Is that too much to ask? To be somebody's Sharona?”

“I didn’t write that song to try and win you over, or to steal you away from him. I wrote it because I knew I never could.”

“I'm tempted to tell you that you think too much, but I'm not really one to talk,' Jacob said. 'Henry Miller wrote something about fear making you fearless. It's a very powerful emotion. Use it to get what you want. I mean if it's going to rule our life, it might as well rule you to freedom, right?”

“I had the feeling I'd just found something I didn't even know I'd lost. We hovered above the moment like two rain clouds, until I said: "Don't swear off all fruit just because you ate one bad apple.”

“We didn't want to be presidents, or astronouts, or Bill Gates. We had pathetically simple dreams: to do meaningful work that we could be proud of, to be together, and to be happy. That certainly wasn't too much to ask. Or was it?”

“Kat and I talked about Jacob in our own private code."Are you baking cookies yet?" she said. That was standard for : have you fucked?"Oh yeah. We've made a couple dozen by now.""What kind?" In other words, was Jacob any good."Chocolate-chip," I said. "And he not only likes to bake them, he likes to eat them, too.""Congratulations.”

“It was all I could do not to fall on my knees and weep like the bastard she always said I was, and I was a breath away from begging her to run away with me.”