“He was bookish, she was not; he was theoretical, she political. She called a rose a rose. He called it an accumulation of cultural and biological constructions circulating around the mutually attracting binary poles of nature/artifice.”

“Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.”

“He smiles shyly at Leah. Aged ten he had a smile! Nathan Bogle: the very definition of desire for girls who had previously only felt that way about certain fragrant erasers. A smile to destroy the resolve of even the strictest teachers, other people's parents. Now she sees ten-year-olds and cannot believe they have inside them what she had inside her at the same age.”

“Keisha Blake, whose celebrated will and focus did not leave her much room for angst, watched her friend ascend to the top deck in her new panda-eyed makeup and had a mauvais quart d'heure, wondering whether she herself had any personality at all or was in truth only the accumulation and reflection of all the things she had read in books and seen on television.”

“It seems to me,' said Magid finally, as the moon became clearer than the sun, 'that you have tried to love a man as if he were an island and you were shipwrecked and you could mark the land with an X. It seems to me it is too late in the day for all that.'Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.”

“He promised them a class that would challenge their own beliefs about the redemptive humanity of what is commonly called 'Art'. 'Art is the Western myth,' announced Howard, for the sixth year in a row, 'with which we both console ourselves and make ourselves.”

“She had that thing most people don't have - curiosity. She might not have always got the right answers, but she wanted to ask the questions. It's very hard if you are interested in ideas and all that, ideas and the philosophies of the past, it's very hard to find someone around here to really talk to. That's the tragedy of the thing really I mean, when you think about it. Certainly I can't find anyone around here to talk to anymore. And for a woman it's even harder you see. They can feel very trapped - because of the patriarchy. I do feel everyone needs to have these little chats now and then.”