I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn't terribly painful.

You're nice,' Cushie told him, squeezing his hand. 'And you're my oldest friend.' But they both must have known that you can know someone all your life and never quite be friends.

… but only because exhaustion is a life-sign; it is at least a form of being human.

...I suddenly realized what small towns are. They are places where you grow up with the peculiar-you live next door to the strange and the unlikely for so long that everything and everyone become commonplace.

We permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it - and reward it in all manner of ways.

No adult in my family would ever tell me anything about who my father was. I knew from an older cousin - only four years older than I am - everything, or what little I could discover about him.

Nothing moves at the Hotel New Hampshire! We're screwed down here-for life!