“But then, life is a constant withering of possibilities. Some are stolen with the lives of people you love. Others are let go, with regret and reluctance and deep, deep sorrow. But there is compens...”

“That's what Jamie didn't understand: it was never just sex. Even the fastest, dirtiest, most impersonal screw was about more than sex. It was about connection. It was about looking at another human...”

“And reading this way - with no deadline, no agenda - she remembered why she loved literature so much. It was like fucking a new man and knowing that he had made other women come, but that when she ...”

“Real love should draw no blood from the loved and buckets from the lover.”

“The thing I never understood about love is that it can't be quelled, like lust can. With love, if you follow its call, if you give in to it, it just gets worse. The more you have, the deeper you go...”

“There are many things that make a man irritable when he arrives home from work in the evening and a sensible wife will usually notice the storm-signals and will leave him alone until he simmers down.”

“Oblivion, she thought. That was the world she lived in. It was what they should name some countries, towns, and places.”

“A lot of men wouldn't like being called a romantic. It's not macho enough.'Quite often men are fools.”

“a wise woman puts a grain of sugar in everything she says to a man, and takes a grain of salt with everything he says to her.”

“There are two types of women the type that makes a man feel like he is the best and the type that makes a man feel like becoming a better man. And then I suppose it is all up to the man and what he...”

“Orpheus said the mind is a slide ruler. It can fit around anything. Show me your body, he said. It only means one thing.”