“Just don't ever let it happen to you, Dolores. Let people just shit all over you. Don't you ever become some man's personal toilet that way I did.”

“I know it's a crock of shit. I ain't offering you happily-ever-after. I'm offering you... happily-maybe-sometimes-ever-after. Sort of. You know, with warts and shit." -Thayer”

“You orchestrate happiness, Dolores - you work at it. You don't catch it as it hurls toward you like a football”

“You can be two things if you're a woman, Dolores. Betty Crocker or a floozy. Just remember your place - even if it kills you.”

“Let me tell you something, my wife died for Tuesdays ago. Cancer of the colon. We were married forty-one years. Now you stop feeling sorry for yourself and lose some of that pork of yours. Pretty girl like you - you don't want to do this yourself.”

“Life's a shit sandwich, my ass. Life's a polka and don't you forget it!”

“Look, don't just stare at the pages," I used to tell my students. "Become the characters. Live inside the book.”