“If happiness is anticipation with certainty, we were happy.”

“It hit her like a sledgehammer, and it was then that she knew what to feel. A liquid trail of hate flooded her chest.Knowing that she would hate him long and well filled her with pleasant anticipation, like when you know you are going to fall in love with someone and you wait for the happy signs. Hating BoyBoy, she could get on with it, and have the safety, the thrill, the consistency of that hatred as long as she wanted or needed it to define and strengthen her or protect her from routine vulnerabilities.”

“How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.”

“I want to feel what I feel. What's mine. Even if it's not happiness, whatever that means. Because you're all you've got.”

“When am I happy and when am I sad and what is the difference? What do I need to know to stay alive? What is true in the world?”

“No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you.”

“And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.”