“On of the reasons that I wanted to study literature was because it exposed everything. Writers looked for secrets that had never been mined. Every writer has to invent their own magical language, i...”

“Adam was charming and spoke perfect French. Like many anglophones in Montral, he actually spoke French better than we did. They knew exactly which verbs to use in the same way that people knew whic...”

“You feel as if everybody has been given an instruction manual on how to be likable, but you didnt get it. And they are all sold out now. And if you are what you eat, then you must have surely spent...”

“I had to admit that I had a strong tendency to date jokers. I couldnt say no to them. I would sit across from someone I was dating and try to imagine who in the entire world would date this nimrod ...”

“It might seem like the easier way to get rid of a poet would be just to take him out to the backyard, have him kneel between the cans with tomato plants in them and put a bullet in his brain. But t...”

“Oh, we had a lot of sex back then in Montreal; it wasn’t just me. Blame it on the cold. The roses in everyone’s cheeks made them seem way more appealing than they actually were. We confused the ind...”

“Oh, we had a lot of sex back then in Montreal; it wasn’t just me. Blame it on the cold. The roses in everyone’s cheeks made them seem way more appealing than they actually were. We confused the ind...”

“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.”