“I flopped on the overstuffed kitchen couch and watched him go. I wondered what would happen to all his films and photographs in the upstairs closet - the documentaries on homelessness and drug addi...”

“People are so cheap. Everyone wants quality, no one wants to pay for it. Here's the suburban dream-- to hire great workers who are such meek morons that they don't have the guts to ask for a living...”

“It was bad enough not having a boyfriend for New Year's Eve. Now I had to cope with Valentine datelessness, feeling consummate social pressure from every retailer in America who stuck hearts and cu...”

“What kind of kids live in Mulhoney, Wisconsin? Would they like me? Would I like them? Have they ever eaten sushi? That's usually how I determine food sophistication. Maybe a personal ad would get t...”

“You don't mince words.""Just garlic.”

“On cheap tippers:"Don't take it personally; they were deprived somehow as children.On low-fat entrees: "They sell well enough, but nobody's too happy after the meal.”

“God can use the jawbone of an ass!”

“Honest, open communication is the only street that leads us into the real world... We then begin to grow as never before. And once we are on this road, happiness cannot be far away.”

“I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. ...”

“Children betrayed their parents by becoming their own people.”

“But marrying within one's own family can get monotonous. One has heard all the same family stories, knows all the jokes and all the same recipes. No novelty.”

“She took comfort in the familiarity of his smell, knowing that if she lost all her possessions and her home, at least she would have her family.”

“I wanted desperately to get all hot and sweaty with this guy, but I knew from experience that hormones affected my sensibilities like alcohol or pot. In the throes of passion I tend to vow my etern...”

“How embarrassing that she ever did something that silly. But, good God, she was seventeen. At that age, we're mostly high-pitched and crazy. All urgent chemicals raging around the blood course. And...”

“How embarrassing that she ever did something that silly. But, good God, she was seventeen. At that age, we're mostly high-pitched and crazy. All urgent chemicals raging around the blood course. And...”