“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.”

“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?”

“He isn’t like most guys, you know?'I know.'No, but do you really know? I mean here’s the deal, what do most guys want from a woman? I’ll tell you what we want. We want a warm body to sleep next to, preferably one with a nice pair of tits, maybe someone who’ll cook for us and fuck us on a regular basis. Pretty simple, huh? Now, what we don’t want is someone who’s going to come in and disrupt our lives and steal our souls. That’s what we fear most. We call it our freedom, but it’s our souls we’re talking about. You following me?'I nodded.Okay, good. Now forget it. Forget all that,' Pete said. 'Because Jacob’s not like that. He’s never been like that. He’s a damn fool and he wants the exact opposite of all that. He wants someone to obsess over, someone to possess his soul, and those are his corny words, by the way, not mine. It’s what he lives for. It’s what he thinks life’s all about. Do you get what I’m saying?'I nodded again.”

“I led Paul out the door, and neither of us said a word while we crossed the street. Once we made it to the other side, Paul stopped to stare at the building. He was babbling incoherently. The only words I caught were “fucking uptown” and “pancreas.” He still had the doorman's pen in his hand.”

“Do you realize what you accomplished today? You're supposed to be happy right now.” “I am. That's the most fucked-up part,” he said. “I've never been happier in my life. But when dreams come true in reality they never feel the same as when you imagine them, and you know what that means? It means that no matter how good things are, maybe they'll never be good enough, and there's something seriously wrong with that.”

“To Jacob the act of critiquing art was essentially imprecise. That's why he didn't read reviews on anything he liked, be it a book, a movie, or a record. He believed that any work an artist puts forth which contains the truth as he or she sees it is worthy of consideration, and any commentary of the work beyond that is nothing more than pure individual opinion and should not be considered relevant to the work itself.”

“People have reasons for what they do, Beatrice. And even if those reasons can't be justified, that doesn't make them bad people, just flawed. You have to remember," she said, "someone or something has hurt them too.”