You chose love like a belief, a faith, a place, a box for one's heart to knock against like a spook in the house.

Nothing's a joke with me. It just all comes out like one.

But I believed in starting over. There was finally, I knew, only rupture and hurt and falling short between all persons, but, Shirley, the best revenge was to turn your life into a small gathering of miracles. If I could not be anchored and profound, I would try, at least, to be kind.

This was love, I supposed, and eventually I would come to know it. Someday it would choose me and I would come to know its spell, for long stretches and short, two times, maybe three, and then quite probably it would choose me never again.

I don't have a love life. I have a like life.

(Such a life)engaged gross quantities of hope and despair and set them wildly side by side, like a Third World country of the heart.

Decide that you like college life. In your dorm you meet many nice people. Some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life.