“Never talk to waiters like that," Kit said."Can I help it," he said, "if I only went one year to finishing school?""It isn't manners," she said like a sensible schoolteacher quietly disciplining a ...”

“There was a lull. Sammy was staring across the room at George Opdyke, the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner. I was about to say he was lost in thought, but Sammy was never really lost, and he never ...”

“I thought of Sammy Glick rocking in his cradle of hate, malnutrition, prejudice, suspicions, amorality, the anarchy of the poor; I thought of him as a mangy puppy in a dog-eat-dog world. I was modu...”

“We thought everything would be forgotten, but I still remember yourclaws running down my back.I wonder if you still think about us,the way I do.How our legs would crash into each other in the middl...”

“Cole, I said, do you think Im lovable?As in cuddly and?As in able to be loved, I said.Coles gaze was unwavering. Just for a moment, I had the strange idea that I could see exactly what he had looke...”

“A spouse who refuses to cultivate or fan physical intimacy first devalued the marriage in their mind and priorities. Spouses who defile their marriage bed first lost honor for their marriage.”

“Marrying an old bachelor is like buying second-hand furniture.”

“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.”