They examine and reexamine, with a sort of unhappy enthusiasm, the little ignorances that necessarily, Julie says, line the path to any real connection between persons.

He demands compassion from a mirror he’s backed away from, hoping to make the water stop. But it doesn’t.

Say the whole point of love is to try to get your fingers through the holes in the lover’s mask. To get some kind of hold on the mask, and who cares how you do it.”

I woke once, very late, to his broad brown back, moving, a rhythm, his open hand to his face, still repeating.

Not handsome in a to-die-for way, just this monstrous radiance of ordinary health—a commodity rare, and thus valuable, in Baltimore.

Drew-Lynn is neurosis in motion, and simply cannot abide take-off if certain cards show up on the pre-flight Tarot she spreads on the fold-down tray.

a man wholly allergic to any distance between himself and his way

“My opinion: Faye is the sort of girl who’s constantly surfing on her emotions. You know? Not really in control of where they take her, but not quite ever wiping out, yet, either. A psychic surfer. But scary-looking, for so young. These black, bulging, buggy eyes. Perfectly round and black. Impressive breasts, though.”

Drew-Lynn will, in time, become J.D. Steelritter Advertising, and discover that the key to all ingenious and effective and original advertising is not the compelled creation of all-new jingles and images, but the simple arrangement of old words and older pictures into relationships the consumer already believes are true.