You've got to stop letting women slip drugs into your mouth, Dex, it's unhygienic. And dangerous. One day it'll be a cyanide capsule.

The future rose up ahead of her, a succession of empty days, each more daunting and unknowable than the one before her.

I'm not the consolation prize, Dex. I'm not something you resort to. I happen to think I'm worth more than that.

There's something unnatural about a woman finding babies or, more specifically, conversation about babies, boring. They'll think she's bitter, jealous, lonely. But she's also bored of everybody telling her how lucky she is, what with all that sleep and all that freedom and spare time, the ability to go on dates or head off to Paris at a moments notice. It sounds like they're consoling her, and she resents this and feels patronized by it.

No, friends were like clothes: fine while they lasted but eventually they wore thin or you grew out of them.

She was reaching the limits of how much its possible to change a man

Sometimes I wish that I hadn't learned how to crochet," I say, and Alice laughs. Obviously she thinks I'm joking, which is maybe for the best.