All cynics are disappointed idealists. The more stars in the eyes, the harder the fall.

...Jake, a homosexual cop buried so deep in the closet he didn't know where to look for himself.

And I thought maybe I didn't need to worry about my heart anymore because it had stopped beating a couple of seconds earlier, and I was still sitting there living and breathing-though admittedly I wasn't feeling much of anything.

Vintage books, old china, antiques; maybe I love old things so much because I feel impermanent myself.

Drink your coffee -- people in Africa are sleeping.

I hadn't liked him at first. He did sort of grow on you after a while. Like the cosmopolitans. Or maybe because of the cosmopolitans.

I thought of the words of the Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne. "If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.