You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer...an almost physical nerve, the kind you need to walk a log across a river.

I am not mad because I'm a woman... I'm mad because you're an asshole.

Stick a shovel in the ground almost anywhere and some horrible thing or other will come to light.

She stubs out her cigarette in the brown glass ashtray, then settles herself against him, ear to his chest. She likes to hear his voice this way, as if it begins not in his throat but in his body, like a hum or a growl, or like a voice speaking from deep underground. Like the blood moving through her own heart: a word, a word, a word.

She’s the kind of woman who wants what she doesn’t have and gets what she wants and then despises what she gets.

This world is not enough, but it will have to do. You can either hold on or let go.