[T]he astonishing purity of pain, how it will not be mixed with any other sensation.

If you want to see the consequences of ideas, write a story. If you want to see the consequences of belief, write a story in which somebody is acting on the ideas or beliefs that she has.

You think that what I've told you is an anecdote. But really it isn't. It's my whole life. It's the only story I have.

What a midwesterner he was, a thoroughly unhip guy with his heart in the usual place, on the sleeve, in plain sight.

I don't think that most women have to prove that they're real women. You live long enough, you graduate to being real.

You know, there's something heartsick about parties like this. Look at us. We're all pretending to be smart, as if intelligence were the cure for our anguish.

At least with pets, and for all I know, people too, intelligence and quick-wittedness have nothing to do with a talent for being loved, or being kind, nothing at all, less than nothing.