I know that attaching memories to books may be going out of the world, but while it lasts, it's a strong record of your life.

Normality wasn't normal. It couldn't be. If normality were normal, everybody could leave it alone. They could sit back and let normality manifest itself.

I was unemployable when I got out of college.

We knew that Cecilia had killed herself because she was a misfit, because the beyond called to her, and we knew that her sisters, once abandoned, felt her calling from that place, too.

The Statue of Liberty's gender changed nothing. It was the same here as anywhere: men and their wars.

It was amazing how it worked: the tiniest bit of truth made credible the greatest lies.

Is there anything as incredible as the love story of your own parents? Anything as hard to grasp as the fact that those two over-the-hill players, permanently on the disabled list, were once in the starting lineup? It's impossible to imagine my father, who in my experience was aroused mainly by the lowering of interest rates, suffering the acute, adolescent passions of the flesh.