All these lives," she said. "All the stories we never know." (125)

If you get divorced in New York, you go into therapy and will talk to anybody you meet on the sidewalk about it.

Olive's private view is that life depends on what she thinks of as "big bursts" and "little bursts." Big bursts are things like marriage or children, intimacies that keep you afloat, but these big bursts hold dangerous, unseen currents. Which is why you need the little bursts as well: a friendly clerk at Bradlee's, let's say, or the waitress at Dunkin' Donuts who knows how you like your coffee. Tricky business, really.

She didn't like to be alone. Even more, she didn't like being with people. (148)

Oh that's lovely," said Bunny. "Olive, you've got a date." "Why would you say something so foolish?" Olive asked, really annoyed. "We're two lonely people having supper." "Exactly," said Bunny. "That's a date.

I love theater. I love sitting in an audience and having the actors right there, playing out what it means to be a human being.

The appetites of the body were private battles.