"There are few phrases that annoy me more than I won't bite. The only line that pisses me off faster is when some drunk, ham-faced dude in a bar sees me trying to get past him and barks: Smile,it can't be that bad! Yeah, actually, it can, jackwad."

"They thought more before nine a.m. than most people thought all month. I remember once declining cherry pie at dinner, and Rand cocked his head and said, 'Ahh! Iconoclast. Disdains the easy, symbolic patriotism.' And when I tried to laugh it off and said, well, I didn't like cherry cobbler either, Marybeth touched Rand's arm: 'Because of the divorce. All those comfort foods, the desserts a family eats together, those are just bad memories for Nick.' It was silly but incredibly sweet, these people spending so much energy trying to figure me out. The answer: I don't like cherries."

"Tampon commercial, detergent commercial, maxi pad commercial, windex commercial - you'd think all women do is clean and bleed."

"And I think, 'I'm so fucking lonely'. I go home and cry for a while. I am almost 32. That's not old especially in New York. But the fact is it has been years since I even liked someone. So how likely is it I'll meet someone I love enough to marry? I'm tired of not knowing who I'll be with, or if I'll be with anyone."

"It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I'm not a real person and neither is anyone else."

"Amy! My God! My God! My darling!' and buried my face in her neck, my arms wrapped tight around her, and let the cameras get their fifteen seconds, and I whispered deep inside her ear, 'You fucking bitch."

"What are you thinking, Amy? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we ddone to each other? What will we do?"

"I don't feel the need to explain my actions to her. I don't clarify, I don't doubt, I don't worry. I don't tell her everything, not anymore, but I tell her more than anyone else, by far. I tell her as much as I can."

"Books are temporary , dicks are forever."

"My dad had limitations. That's what my good-hearted mom always told us. He had limitations, but he meant no harm. It was kind of her to say, but he did do harm."

"Blame the economy, blame bad luck, blame my parents, blame your parents, blame the Internet, blame people who use the Internet."

"Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed."

"I feel like Amy wanted people to believe she really was perfect. And as we got to be friends, I got to know her. And she wasn't perfect. You know? She was brilliant and charming and all that, but she was also controlling and OCD and a drama queen and a bit of a liar. Which was fine by me. It just wasn't fine by her. She got rid of me because I knew she wasn't perfect."

"Ever been in a spelling bee as a kid? That snowy second after the announcement of the word as you sift your brain to see if you can spell it? It was like that, the blank panic."

"Sometimes I think I won't ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand. Three more days to get through until I don't have to worry about life anymore."

"I am overachieving at aimlessness, I am a type-A, alpha-girl lollygagger, the leader of a gang of heartbroken kids, running wild across this lonely strip of amusements, each of us smarting from the betrayals of a loved one."

"Something bad was about to happen. My wife was being clever again."

"We just want you to be happy. Rand and Marybeth said that all the time, but they never explained how."

"The man cocked his gun and Patty had time for one last thought: I wish, I wish, I wish I could take this back."

"Desi has loved me ever since the lie, I know he pictures making love to me, how gentle and reassuring he would be as he plunged into me, stroking my hair. I know he pictures me crying softly as I give myself to him."

"New York was packed with writers, real writers, because there were magazines, real magazines, loads of them. This was back when the Internet was still some exotic pet kept in the corner of the publishing world-throw some kibble at it, watch it dance on its little leash, oh quite cute, it definitely won't kill us in the night."

"I still believed he'd love me again somehow, love me that intense, thick way he did, the way that made everything good."

"Writers (my kind of writers: aspiring novelists, ruminative thinkers, people whose brains don't work quick enough to blog or link or tweet, basically old, stubborn blowhards) were through. We were like women's hat makers or buggy-whip manufacturers: Our time was done."

"It's a nice day's work when you make a lot of people smile."

"I lack formal education. So I'm left with the feeling that I'm smarter than everyone around me but that if I ever got around really smart people-people who went to universities and drank wine and spoke Latin-that they'd be bored as hell by me. It's a lonely way to go through life."

"Everyone who keeps a secret, itches to tell it."

"She is an incredibly intelligent idiot."

"Bang bang bang. I understand now why so many horror movies use that device-the mysterious knock on the door-because it has the weight of a nightmare. You don't know what's out there, yet you know you'll open it. You'll think what I think: No one bad ever knocks."

"At that exact moment, 6-0-0, the sun climbed over the skyline of oaks, revealing its full summer angry-god self. Its reflection flared across the river toward our house, a long, blaring finger aimed at me through our frail bedroom curtains. Accusing: You have been seen. You will be seen."

"In these shitty plastic days ..."

"I regretted what a serious teenager I'd been: There were no posters of pop stars or favorite movies, no girlish collection of photos or corsages. Instead there were paintings of sailboats, proper pastel pastorals, a portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt. The latter was particularly strange, since I'd known little about Mrs. Roosevelt, except that she was good, which at the time I suppose was enough. Given my druthers now, I'd prefer a snapshot of Warren Harding's wife, 'the Duchess,' who recorded the smallest offenses in a little red notebook and avenged herself accordingly. Today I like my first ladies with a little bite."

"The one plentiful herds of magazine writers would continue to be culled - by the Internet, by the recession, by the American public, who would rather watch TV or play video games or electronically inform friends that, like, 'rain sucks!' But there's no app for a bourbon buzz on a warm day in a cool, dark bar. The world will always want a drink."

"Things might not be great, but things would be okay."

"I don't understand the point of being together if you're not the happiest."

"A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort."

"We will have a happy marriage if it kills him."

"I always feel sad for the girl that I was, because it never occurred to me that my mother might comfort me. She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did. She tended to me. She administrated me."

"I know, I know, I'm being a girl."

"We named the bar The Bar. 'People will think we're ironic instead of creatively bankrupt,' my sister reasoned.Yes, we thought we were being clever New Yorkers - that the name was a joke no one else would really get, like we did. Not meta-get ... But our first customer, a gray-haired woman in bifocals and a pink jogging suit, said, 'I like the name. Like in Breakfast at Tiffany's and Audrey Hepburn's cat was named Cat."

"One should never marry a man who doesn't own a decent set of scissors."

"They always call depression the blues, but I would have been happy to waken to a periwinkle outlook. Depression to me is urine yellow, washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss."

"Love makes you want to be a better man-right, right. But maybe love, real love, also gives you permission to just be the man you are."

"Soul mates. They really call themselves that, which makes sense, because I guess they are ... They have no harsh edges with each other, no spiny conflicts, they ride though life like conjoined jellyfish - expanding and contracting instinctively, filling each other's spaces liquidly. Making it look easy."

"Sleep is like a cat: It only comes to you if you ignore it. I drank more and continued my mantra. 'Stop thinking', swig, 'empty your head', swig, 'now, seriously empty your head'."

"I'm just tired of people judging me because I fit into a certain mold."

"There's a difference between really loving someone and loving the idea of her."

"I am not angry or sad or happy to see you. I could not give a shit. You don't even ripple."

"My brain is so busy with Nick thoughts, it's a swarm inside my head: Nicknicknicknicknick! And when I picture his mind, I hear my name as a shy crystal ping that occurs once, maybe twice, a day and quickly subsides. I just wish he thought about me as much as I do him.Is that wrong? I don't even know anymore."

"I think of that, too: her mind. Her brain, all those coils, and her thoughts shuttling through those coils like fast, frantic centipedes. Like a child, I picture opening her skull, unspooling her brain and sifting through it, trying to catch and pin down her thoughts. What are you thinking, Amy?"

"It was one of the few stories we told the same way."