College wasn't like the real world. In the real world people dropped names based on their renown. In college, people dropped names based on their obscurity.

A girl's not a watermelon you plug a hole in to see if it's sweet.

Novelists are always resisting autobiographical readings of their work, because they know how false those can be.

There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you.

Well, marriage doesn't function in the way it used to in terms of deciding our fate, but it's in our heads, and it determines a lot of our actions. Like, right now, if you think about gay marriage - and they just started having the first gay marriages in New York - it shows what a potent idea marriage remains for people.

All wisdom ends in paradox.

girls forbidden to dance would only attract husbands with bad complexions and sunken chests.