"Surviving a relationship with any other human being sometimes seemed impossible to him." (271)

"Tulpen and I are both twenty-eight, but she's really older than I am; she has outgrown having to talk about herself." (6)

"It's Tulpen's apartment, and all the things in it are hers. I left my things, and my child, with my first and only wife." (6)

"On his way home, his right headlight falls out and he drives over it. Changing his right front tire, he thinks he'd like to meet a man who thinks he's got a worse car." (9)

Since his father disinherited him, he had learned to hoard little injustices, wishing they might merge and leave him with one significant wound, for which he could guiltlessly martyr himself forever." (12)

"Yogurt and lots of water, and a certain sympathy when sympathy matters. I'm all right. Things are straightening out. This is the matter of my...