Keeping up the appearance of having all your marbles is hard work, but important.

I just can't. I'm married. I made my bed and now I have to lie in it.

Jacob: I've never seen so much manure. Wade: Baggage stock horses. They pack'em in 27 a car. Jacob: how do you stand the smell? Wade: what smell?

I want her to melt into me, like butter on toast. I want to absorb her and walk around for the rest of my days with her encased in my skin. I want.

Don't want to get tipsy and break a hip.

I scan the room. Catherine is writing quickly, her light brown hair falling over her face. She is left-handed, and because she writes in pencil her left arm is silver from wrist to elbow.

When you are five, you know your age down to the month. Even in your twenties, you know how old you are. I'm twenty-three you say, or maybe twenty-seven. But then in your thirties, something strange starts to happen. It is a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I'm--you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you are not. You're thirty-five. And then you're bothered, because you wonder if this is the beginning of the end. It is, of course, but it's decades before you admit it.