“With an exceedingly contemptuous expression, Idabel drew up to her full height. "Son," she said, and spit between her fingers, "what you've got in your britches is no news to me, and no concern of mine: hell, I've fooled around with nobody but boys since first grade. I never think like I'm a girl; you've got to remember that, or we can't never be friends." For all its bravado, she made this declaration with a special and compelling innocence; and when she knocked one fist against the other, as, frowning, she did now, and said: "I want so much to be a boy: I would be a sailor, I would..." the quality of her futility was touching.”

“What do you think? This ought to be the right kind of place for tough guy like you. Garbage cans. Rats galore. Plenty of cat-bums to gang around with. So scram,’ she said, dropping him… '...I told you. We just met by the river one day: that’s all. Independents, both of us. We never made each other any promises. We never -’ she said, and her voice collapsed, a tic, an invalid whiteness seized her face. The car had paused for a traffic light. Then she had the door open, she was running down the street; and I ran after her. ...she shuddered, she had to grip my arm to stand up: ‘Oh, Jesus God. We did belong to each other. He was mine.’ Then I made her a promise, I said I’d come back and find her cat. ‘I’ll take care of him, too. I promise.’ She smiled: that cheerless new pinch of a smile. ‘But what about me?’ she said, whispered, and shivered again. ‘I’m very scared, Buster. Yes, at last. Because it could go on forever. Not knowing what’s yours until you’re thrown it away. The mean reds, they’re nothing...”

“You cold or something?' he said. She strained against him; she wanted to pass clear through him: 'It's a chill, it's nothing'; and then, pushing a little away: 'Say you love me.'I said it.'No, oh no. You haven't. I was listening. And you never do.'Well, give me time.'Please.'He sat up and glanced at a clock across the room. It was after five. Then decisively he pulled off his windbreaker and began to unlace his shoes.Aren't you going to, Clyde?'He grinned back at her. 'Yeah, I'm going to.'I don't mean that; and what's more, I don't like it: you sound as though you were talking to a whore.'Come off it, honey. You didn't drag me up here to tell you about love.'You disgust me,' she said.Listen to her! She's sore!'A silence followed that circulated like an aggrieved bird. Clyde said, 'You want to hit me, huh? I kind of like you when you're sore: that's the kind of girl you are,' which made Grady light in his arms when he lifted and kissed her. 'You still want me to say it?' Her head slumped on his shoulder. 'Because I will,' he said, fooling his fingers in her hair. 'Take off your clothes--and I'll tell it to you good.”

“Hack, hack, hack. I wouldn't pay twenty-five cents to spit on a Georgia O'Keeffe painting. And I think she's a horrible person, too. I know her...So arrogant, so sure of herself. I'm sure she's carrying a dildo in her purse.”

“I've got to stay awake,' she said, punching her cheeks until the roses came. 'There isn't time to sleep, I'd look consumptive, I'd sag like a tenement, and that wouldn't be fair: a girl can't go to Sing Sing with a green face.”

“He left soon afterwards, leaving her alone in the dark room, illuminated time to time by shocking leaps of heat lightning, and she thought, now it will rain, and it never did, and she thought, now he will come, and he never did. She lighted cigarettes, letting them die between her lips, and the hours, thorned, crucifying, waited with her, and listened as she listened: but he was not coming.”

“She would not admit she was making a mess. Unfazed by bacon already shriveled and coffee stone-cold, she poured her mixings onto a grill she'd forgotten to grease, and said, "Oh I adore to cook: it makes me feel so mindless in a worthwhile way.”