“Mr. Awkward rolls up between us, lights a cigarette, makes himself comfortable. It’s the same bastard who shows up after you’ve bumped uglies with a stranger.”

“I was convinced that there was at least a seventy-three percent chance he was gay. I bumped it up from sixty-eight after our third game. Zack showed up wearing a light pink shirt that was tighter than usual.”

“Life isn’t smooth, but it’s the bumps that help us find out who we are. And it’s handling the bumps that gives us courage.”

“How could I sit here and ask this stranger to help me pick up the facts of my life? The shopping bags had burst and all my things were rolling out over a packed pavement with me scurrying after them, stooping and bumping and tripping: Excuse me, I'm sorry. Could you just...Excuse me.”

“Chemistry is an overused word. I prefer ‘fit’, that indefinable sensation when a man takes your arm as you move through a door, or leans into you to light your cigarette. (I gave up smoking for Cary and sometimes I still miss it.) Fit is an understanding between bodies: that you’ve been designed the same way, that you speak each other’s language, and fluently. It’s all about physical compatibility and has nothing to do with whether you’ll last or even have anything to talk about afterwards; fit is no relation to the brain, and only a distant cousin of the heart.”

“the last at last seen of himhimself unseen by himand of himself"A rest.The last Mr. Murphy saw of Mr. Endon was Mr. Murphy unseen by Mr. Endon. This was also the last Murphy saw of Murphy."A rest.The relation between Mr. Murphy and Mr. Endon could not have better summed up than by the former's sorrow at seeing himself in the latter's immunity from seeing anything but himself."A long rest.Mr. Murphy is a speck in Mr. Endon's unseen.”