“She was a page torn from a calendar, a year folded neatly and laid aside in some place you never look.”

“It was like a page torn from a history book, from some historical novel about the captivity of babylon or Spanish Inquisition.”

“If you still don't like a book after slogging through the first 50 pages, set it aside. If you're more than 50 years old, subtract your age from 100 and only grant it that many pages.”

“You had a package. It was torn, so I looked in.” She lifted one of a stack of firefighter calendars, with his own mug and half-naked body on the cover. “Nice,” she said, a ghost of a smile crossing her lips. “Mr. 2008.” He bit back a sigh. “It’s for charity.” “And you definitely contributed.”

“Howard and Shirley were clothed, always, in an invisible layer of decorum that they never laid aside.”

“It's not really much good tearing out a page because you can see the place where it's been torn. [...] You can pull a stamp out,' she said with terrible youthful clarity, 'and you don't know that it's ever been there.”