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

Jerome was sliding and climbing on top of me and it felt like it had the night before, like a crushing weight. So do boys and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love.

She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight.

That's the way I will write characters, put a fair amount of myself in them, and then everyone else who was like that person, I will pick and choose.

Every letter was a love letter. Of course, as love letters went, this one could have been better. It was not very promising, for instance, that Madeleine claimed not to want to see him for the next half-century.

When you stood between somebody you loved and death, it was hard to be awake and it was hard to sleep.

You don't understand me. I'm a teenager. I've got problems!