“The question is… How did a girl like Annabelle manage to talk a man like you into joining our silly little family party?”

Annabelle smiled sweetly. “I promised he could tie me up afterward and spank me.”

“They want to be tied up, I tie them up. They want to be spanked, I spank them. They want to be called names, I call them names. But try and drink a little of their blood, and they scream like babies. What about my needs?”

“'Twas the fifteenth anniversary of her twenty-second year,
So he smiled at her as sweetly as a hog
And asked what present she would like. And jestingly she said:
"Your green tie for my little yellow dog."”

“A baseball bat could not have hit me harder than that smile did. I was sixteen years old. In that time, how many thousands of smiles had been aimed at me? so why did this one feel like the first?”

“To me the great divide is between the talkative and the quiet. Do they just say everything that’s on their minds, even before it’s on their minds? Sometimes I think I could just turn up my head like a walkman so what’s going on there could be heard by others. But there would still be a difference. For inside the head they are talking to people like them, and I am talking to someone like me: he is quiet and doesn’t much like being talked at; he can’t conceal how easily he gets bored.”

“And before you barrel through some idiotic Cosmo girl list of how-well-do-you-know-your-man questions, let me say that I don't know squat about him except that he kisses like a god and screws like a devil.”

“Now you listen to me, you little party-favor, I'm sick of your rotten little attitude! I let YOU beat me up and call me names because I consider you a friend, but I'm sure that if I wanted to, I could throw you around like a chew toy!”

“Used to slip though every girl's hand like water
There never was one who could ever tie me down
Straight ahead and steady as Gibraltar
'Til you brought me tumblin' to the ground You got to me
You brought me to may knees”

“Why did you say you believed me?"
In profile, he could see both the young woman she was becoming and the little girl he remembered.
"Because I trust you.”

“Abe shook his head, and now the smile was gone altogether. "That's not the reason either. Don't lie to me little girl."
I felt my hackles going up. "And don't interrogate me, old man.”