“I was Baptist and had always prayed, in a damp squint, for things not to happen. Sils was a Catholic, and so she prayed for things to happen, for things to come true. She prayed for love here and now. I prayed for no guns.”

“Living did not mean one joy piled upon another. It was merely the hope for less pain, hope played like a playing card upon another hope, a wish for kindnesses and mercies to emerge like kings and queens in an unexpected change of the game. One could hold the cards oneself or not: they would land the same regardless.”

“He began to prefer talking on the phone to actually getting together with someone, preferred the bodilessness of it, and started to turn down social engagements. He didn't want to actually sit across from someone in a restaurant, look at their face, and eat food. He wanted to turn away, not deal with the face, have the waitress bring them two tin cans and some string so they could just converse, in a faceless dialogue.”

“Tell me something wonderful," he said to Dane. "Tell me that we are going to die dreamfully and loved in our sleep.""You're always writing one of your plays on the phone," said Dane."I said, something wonderful. Say something about springtime.""It is sloppy and wet. It is a beast from the sea.""Ah," said Harry.”

“She knew there were only small joys in life--the big ones were too complicated to be joys when you got all through--and once you realized that, it took a lot of the pressure off.”

“I don't sit down to write a funny story. Every single thing I sit down to write is meant to be sad.”

“You know, I'm just a very boring, not very funny person in person. I don't feel pressured to be otherwise.”

“I've never been to a dinner party where everyone at the dinner table didn't say something funny.”

“When I was in graduate school, I had a teacher who said to me, 'Women writers should marry somebody who thinks writing is cute. Because if they really realised what writing was, they would run a mile.'”

“Humor comes from the surprise release of some buried tension.”

“[T]he normal and the everyday are often amazingly unstoppable, and what is unimaginable is the cessation of them. The world is resilient, and, no matter what interruptions occur, people so badly want to return to their lives and get on with them. A veneer of civilization descends quickly, like a shining rain. Dust is settled.”