Want any of this stuff? Jordan?... Nick?" I didn't answer. Nick?" he asked again. What?" Want any?" No... I just remembered that today's my birthday." I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade.

Nancy had a mouth like a remembered kiss.

And lastly from that period I remember riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again.

Experience is not worth the getting. It's not a thing that happens pleasantly to a passive you--it's a wall that an active you runs up against.

Men she knew'? - she had conceded vaguely to herself that all men who had ever been in love with her were her friends.

You're the only girl I've seen for a long time that actually did look like something blooming.

Even when everything seems rotten you can't trust that judgment. It's the sum of all your judgments that counts.