“Look," I whisper to Cat, "Shooting star! That's good luck."
She rolls her eyes. "It's a plane, you idiot," she says, and when I look again I can see that she's right. Typical.”

“I was only kidding about the hundred," she says.

oh," I say, "what will it cost me?"

she lights her cigarette with
my lighter and looks at me
through the flame:

her eyes tell me.

look," I say, "I don't think I
can ever pay that price again.”

“Sam looked at me soft. And she hugged me. And I closed my eyes because I wanted to know nothing but her arms. And she kissed my cheek and whispered so nobody could hear.
"I love you.”

“She weighed no more than a feather as he lifted her, but he teased her, saying, "You weigh more than you look."
"You are weaker than you look," she immediately whispered.”

“Marie falls back upon her idea, obdurately, and says, "A woman only lives by love and for love. When she's no longer good for that she's no longer anything."
She repeats, "You see — I'm nothing any more."
Ah, she is at the bottom of her abyss! She is at the extremity of a woman's mourning! She is not thinking only of me. Her thought is higher and vaster. She is thinking of all the woman she is, of all that love is, of all possible things when she says, "I'm no longer anything." And I — I am only he who is present with her just now, and no help whatever is left her to look for from any one.
I should like to pacify and console this woman who is gentleness and simplicity and who is sinking there while she lightly touches me with her presence — but exactly because she is there I cannot lie to her, I can do nothing against her grief, her perfect, infallible grief.
"Ah!" she cries, "if we came to life again!"”

“Is she crazy, like it says on her bracelet, or is she just looking at my sheets? I dunno!”

“When her guests were awash with champagne and with gin
She was recklessly sober, as sharp as a pin:
An abstemious man would reel at her look
As she rolled a bright eye and praised his last book.”

“I used to see media on Althea [Flynt] and she was very wild looking. She had a mohawk and she published Hustler—I thought that was crazy. But when you study her, she was so innocent and frail and sort of birdlike, and sweet. She stayed sweet until she died, but I don't know what happened for her to get into drugs or the things she got into.”

“She's not that attractive. I mean, she was hard to look at at first, but I figured, rough around the edges, but she can sing good.”

“I only believe in certain kinds of hell," she said, and again she was looking at him, the green eyes steady.
"To each his own, eh?"
"You said it; I didn’t.”