“A deus ex machina will never appear in real life so you best make other arrangements.”

“Well, it doesn't look good. Makes me look like one of those unloved latchkey children they make after-school specials about.""Don't sell yourself short. You're more Masterpiece Theatre.”

“Well, life isn't a cakewalk, is it?! Eighty-nine percent of the world's most valuable art was created by men living in rat-infested flats. You think Velsquez wore Adidas? You think he enjoyed the l...”

“How scary and sudden the shift from Living to Dead.”

“Books give us new lives, loves, and the feeling we aren't alone.”

“There it is, hed say reverentially. The box represents the mysterious threshold between reality and make-believe. [..] Because every one of us has our box, a dark chamber stowing the thing that lan...”

“Sex can be used either for self-affirmation or for self-transcendence either to intensify the ego and consolidate the social persona by some kind of conspicuous embarkation and heroic conquest, or...”

“He didn't know all that much about how the machinery worked anyway. Such knowledge was for specialists. In war, as in love, he was a fearless, happy-go-lucky adventurer.”

“If she did experience sex--or something close to it--in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.”