... maybe that's all anyone who writes or paints or sculpts is doing anyway -- excusing themselves for refusing to live like other people or be like them.

The only genius that's worth anything is the genius for hard work.

Everything matters, but nothing matters very much.

[Sex] is something big and cosmic. What else do we have? There's only birth and death and the union of two people - and sex is the only one that happens to us more than once.

It seemed that up until this moment she had been only half alive.

Charm is the ability to make someone else think that both of you are pretty wonderful.

Marygreen did not change in sixteen years. It had changed little enough in the past two years.