“It would seem this is the gift modernity has bestowed upon our generation: the practice of "dating," an awkward procedure where a man and a woman find themselves talking rot to each other in a darkened room. If it were up to me, I would say modernity can keep it, as I want no part.”

“You see, doubt is a magnificently difficult pest of which to try and rid oneself and is worse than any other kind of infestation. It can creep in quietly and through the tiniest of cracks and once inside, it is almost impossible to ever completely remove.”

“It would seem this is the gift modernity has bestowed upon our generation: the practice of "dating," an awkward procedure where a man and a woman find themselves talking rot to each other in a darkened room. If it were up to me, I would say modernity can keep it, as I want no part.”

“The typewriter is indeed my passport into a world otherwise barred to me and my kind.”

“What was justice, after all, but a particular outcome?”

“We are never the heroes of our own stories, unless we are lying. If we choose to count ourselves among the brave, we write ourselves as the villains we are, hoping for redemption.”

“It dawned on me that no person is as poetically homesick as someone who has come to New York for the first time and glimpsed a small vestige of her home state.”

“There was something in the way he posed a question and followed it up with a generous pause, I think, that drew me out. I had never noticed all the pauses that were missing from most people's conversations.”

“It's a myth that people who live in cities are naturally more open-minded, more accepting and tolerant of difference. The truth is, whatever people are, be it saints or bigots, they simply are these things, and the city - by smashing all those different kinds of people up against one another - just makes people's tolerance (or lack of it) all that much more pronounced.”

“That's the funny thing about doubt." "What do you mean?" "It makes you feel rotten as hell. But if anyone bothered to think about it, it's a symptom of love. It means it matters to you. It's the brain questioning the wisdom of the heart. It doesn't mean the heart doesn't know better all along, it only means the brain doesn't understand how.”