What's really important here," I whispered loudly to myself,"is not the big things other people have thought up, but the small things you, yourself have

The passage of time will usually extract the venom of most things and render them harmless

Exhaustion pays no mind to age or beauty. Like rain and earthquakes and hail and floods.

Precipitate as weather, she appeared from somewhere, then evaporated, leaving only memory.

We heard no other sounds. We met no other people. We saw only two bright red birds leap startled from the center of the meadow and dart into the woods.

I have these realistic dreams and snap wide awake in the middle of the night. And for a while I can't work out what's real and what isn't... That kind of feeling. Do you have any idea what I'm saying?

Why?" she screamed. "Are you crazy? You know the English subjunctive, you understand trigonometry, you can read Marx, and you don't know the answer to something as simple as that? Why do you even have to ask? Why do you have to make a girl SAY something like this? I like you more than I like him, that's all. I wish I had fallen in love with somebody a little more handsome, of course. But I didn't. I fell in love with you!