“Until that moment, it hadn't occurred to me that my grades and test scores over the years were anything more than individual humiliations; I hadn't realized that one day all of them would add up and count against me.”

“I feel in some ways I've had a difficult life. And it makes me the kind of writer I am, in what I value, what I respect, what I hold dear.”

“You can feel like he wants to own you,-not like an object but like a good dream he wants to keep having.”

“You have to shrink yourself to fit into this little life with him.”

“Until that moment, it hadn't occurred to me that my grades and test scores over the years were anything more than individual humiliations; I hadn't realized that one day all of them would add up and count against me.”

“I'd already figured out that not understanding my failings was another one of my failings.”

“There are things that two people say in the middle of the night That don't make sense to a third at breakfast.”

“They were a couple in a way that didn't exclude anyone but seemed superior to every other relationship in the room.”

“It isn't you,' he says, as though you're to be comforted by the irrelevant role you play in your own life.”

“Archie asked me if I knew Dante's definition of hell..."Proximity without intimacy," he said.”

“It occurred to me that the quiet in the suburbs had nothing to do with peace.”