A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house. Except for the chrome hooks, he was an ordinary-looking man of fifty or so.

Ralph also took some classes in philosophy and literature and felt himself on the brink of some kind of huge discovery about himself. But it never came.

there isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails.

There is no God, and conversation is a dying art.

There was this funny thing of anything could happen now that we realized everything had.

You've got to work with your mistakes until they look intended. Understand?

But I can hardly sit still. I keep fidgeting, crossing one leg and then the other. I feel like I could throw off sparks, or break a window--maybe rearrange all the furniture.