Gone Girl - Pg 141

   I just wish it felt more equal. My brain is so busy with Nick thoughts, it's a swarm inside my head: Nicknicknicknicknick! And when I picture his mind, I hear my name as a shy crystal ping that occurs once, maybe twice, a day and quickly subsides. I just wish he thought about me as much as I do him.
   Is that wrong? I don't even know anymore.

Gone Girl - Pg 73

   I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script.
   It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.

Gone Girl - Pg 67

   Five A.M., that's the best time, when the clicking of your heels on the sidewalk sounds illicit. All the people have been put away in their boxes, and you have the whole place to yourself.

Gone Girl - Pg 62

   When Marybeth asked How are you, it wasn't a courtesy, it was an existential question. She studied my face, and I was sure she was studying me, and would continue to note my every thought and action.

Gone Girl - Pg 32

   He snapped his gaze back toward me, his curled lips telling me he saw what everyone else did. I have a face you want to punch: I'm a working-class Irish kid trapped in the body of a total trust-fund douchebag. I smile a lot to make up for my face, but this only sometimes works.

Gone Girl - Pg 30

   You both find the exact same things worth remembering. (Just one olive, though.) You have the same rhythm. Click. You just know each other. All of a sudden you see reading in bed and waffles on Sunday and laughing at nothing and his mouth on yours. And it's so far beyond fine that yo know you can never go back to fine. That fast. You think: Oh, here is the rest of my life. It's finally arrived.

Gone Girl - Pg 29

   I know I am right not to settle, but it doesn't make me feel better as my friends pair off and I stay home on Friday night with a bottle of wine and make myself an extravagant meal and tell myself, This is perfect, as if I'm the one dating me.

Gone Girl - Pg 14

   The street is billowing, and Nick pulls me close and smiles that smile again, and he takes a single lock of my hair between two fingers and runs them all the way to the end, tugging twice, like he's ringing a bell. His eyelashes are trimmed with powder, and before he leans in, he brushes the sugar from my lips so he can taste me.

Gone Girl - Pg 12

   It is a January party, definitely, everyone still glutted and sugar-pissed from the holidays, lazy and irritated simultaneously. A party where people drink too much and pick cleverly worded fights, blowing cigarette smoke out an open window even after the host asks them to go outside. We've already talked to one another at a thousand holiday parties, we have nothing left to say, we are collectively bored, but we don't want to go back into the January cold; our bones still ache from the subway steps.

Gone Girl - Pg 11

   I am not interested in being set up. I need to be ambushed, caught unawares, like some sort of feral love-jackal. I'm too self-conscious otherwise. I feel myself trying to be charming, and then I realize I'm obviously trying to be charming, and then I try to be even more charming to make up for the fake charm, and then I've basically turned into Liza Minnelli: I'm dancing in tights and sequins, begging you to love me. There's a bowler and jazz hands and lots of teeth.

Gone Girl - Pg 8

   The once plentiful herds of magazine writers would continue to be culled—by the Internet, by the recession, by the American public, who would rather watch TV or play video games or electronically inform friends that, like, rain sucks! But there's no app for a bourbon buzz on a warm day in a cool, dark bar. The world will always want a drink.

Gone Girl - Pg 7

   When we were first dating, a Genesis song came on the radio: "She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah." And Amy crooned instead, "She takes my hat and puts it on the top shelf." When I asked her why she'd ever think her lyrics were remotely, possibly, vaguely right, she told me she always thought the woman in the song truly loved the man because she put his hat on the top shelf. I knew I liked her then, really liked her, this girl with an explanation for everything.

Gone Girl - Pg 4

   This was back when the Internet was still some exotic pet kept in the corner of the publishing world—throw some kibble at it, watch it dance on its little leash, oh quite cute, it definitely won't kill us in the night.

Gone Girl - Pg 4

   At that exact moment, 6-0-0, the sun climbed over the skyline of oaks, revealing its full summer angry-god self. Its reflection flared across the river toward our house, a long, blaring finger aimed at me through our frail bedroom curtains. Accusing: You have been seen. You will be seen.

THE GLASS CASTLE - JEANNETTE WALLS

The Glass Castle - Pg 286

   I loved him for all sorts of reasons: He cooked without recipes; he wrote nonsense poems for his nieces; his large, warm family had accepted me as one of their own. and when I first showed him my scar, he said it was interesting. He used the word "textured." He said "smooth" was boring but "textured" was interesting, and the scar meant that I was stronger than whatever it was that had tried to hurt me.

The Glass Castle - Pg 279

   But despite all the hell-raising and destruction and chaos he had created in our lives, I could not imagine what my life would be like—what the world would be like—without him in it. As awful as he could be, I always knew he loved me in a way no one else ever had.

The Glass Castle - Pg 276

   I just stood there looking from one distorted face to another, listening to this babble of enraged squabbling as the members of the Walls family gave vent to all their years of hurt and anger, each unloading his or her own accumulated grievances and blaming the others for allowing the most fragile one of us to break into pieces.

The Glass Castle - Pg 268

   "He treats me fine, Dad," I said. What I wanted to say was that I knew Eric would never try to steal my paycheck or throw me out the window, that I'd always been terrified I'd fall for a hard-drinking, hell-raising, charismatic scoundrel like you, Dad, but I'd wound up with a man who was exactly the opposite.

The Glass Castle - Pg 261

   He saw me looking at his trembling fingers and held them up. "Lack of liquor or fear of God—don't know which is causing it," he said. "Maybe both."

The Glass Castle - Pg 246

   People had been warning me for months about how rude New Yorkers were. It was true, I learned that night, that if you tried to stop them on the street, a lot of them kept on walking, shaking their heads; those who did stop didn't look at you at first. They gazed off down the block, their faces closed. But as soon as they realized you weren't trying to hustle them or panhandle money, they warmed right up. They looked you in the eye and gave you detailed instructions about how, to get to the Empire State Building, you went up nine blocks and made a right and cut across two blocks and so on. They even drew you maps. New Yorkers, I figured, just pretended to be unfriendly.

The Glass Castle - Pg 245

   I hoped when New Yorkers looked at me, they would see whatever it was that Dad saw.

The Glass Castle - Pg 241

   I wondered if he was remembering how he, too, had left Welch full of vinegar at age seventeen and just as convinced as I was now that he'd never return. I wondered if he was hoping that his favorite girl would come back, or if he was hoping that, unlike him, she would make it out for good.

The Glass Castle - Pg 240

   I hugged Dad. When our cheeks touched, and I breathed in his smell of tobacco, Vitalis, and whiskey, I realized he'd shaved for me.
   "If things don't work out, you can always come home," he said. "I'll be here for you. You know that, don't you?"
   "I know." I knew that in his way, he would be. I also knew I'd never be coming back.

The Glass Castle - Pg 223

   Lori was about as different as it was possible to be in Welch. While almost all the other kids wore jeans, Converse sneakers, and T-shirts, she showed up at school in army boots, a white dress with red polka dots, and a jean jacket with dark poetry she'd painted on the back. The other kids threw bars of soap at her, pushed one another into her path, and wrote graffiti about her on the bathroom walls. In return, she cursed them out in Latin.

The Glass Castle - Pg 210

   "Have I ever let you down?" Dad asked.
   I'd heard that question at least two hundred times, and I'd always answered it the way I knew he wanted me to, because I thought it was my faith in Dad that had kept him going all those years. I was about to tell him the truth for the first time, about to let him know that he'd let us all down plenty, but then I stopped... I gave him the twenty dollars.

The Glass Castle - Pg 168

   Francie Nolan's father sure reminded me of Dad. If Francie saw the good in her father, even though most people considered him a shiftless drunk, maybe I wasn't a complete fool for believing in mine. Or trying to believe in him. It was getting harder.

The Glass Castle - Pg 141

   I'd seen Dinitia smile a few times with genuine warmth, and it transformed her face. With a smile like that, she had to have some good in her, but I couldn't figure out how to get her to shine it my way.

The Glass Castle - Pg 134

   The stores, the signs, the sidewalks, the cars were all covered with a film of black coal dust, giving the town an almost monochromatic look, like an old hand-tinted photograph.

The Glass Castle - Pg 122

   "Rose Mary, you're one hell of a woman," Dad said. Mom told him he was a stinking rotten drunk. "Yeah, but you love this old drunk, don't you?" Dad said. Mom at first said no, she didn't, but Dad kept asking her again and again, and when she finally said yes, the fight disappeared from both of them. Vanished as if it had never existed. Dad started laughing and hugging Mom, who was laughing and hugging him. It was as if they were so happy they hadn't killed each other that they had fallen in love all over again.

The Glass Castle - Pg 104

   Mom thought it was superficial to worry about how you looked. She said God thought the same way, so she'd go to church in torn or paint-splattered clothes. It was your inner spirit and not your outward appearance that mattered, she said, and come hymn time, she showed the whole congregation her spirit, belting out the words in such a powerful voice that people in the pews in front of us would turn around and stare.

The Glass Castle - Pg 97

   Lori loved seeing the world clearly. She started compulsively drawing and painting all the wondrous things she was discovering, like the way each curved tile on Emerson's roof cast its own curved shadow on the tile below, and the way the setting sun painted the underbellies of the clouds pink but left the piled-up tops purple.
   Not long after Lori got her glasses, she decided she wanted to be an artist, like Mom.

The Glass Castle - Pg 96

   On the way home, she kept seeing for the first time all these things that most everyone else had stopped noticing because they'd seen them every day. She read street signs and billboards aloud. She pointed out starlings perched on the telephone wires We went into a bank and she stared up at the vaulted ceiling and described the octagonal patterns.

The Glass Castle - Pg 96

   "What's the matter?" I asked. Instead of answering, Lori ran outside. I followed her. She was standing in the parking lot, gazing in awe at the trees, the houses, and the office buildings behind them.
   "You see that tree over there?" she said, pointing at a sycamore about a hundred feet away. I nodded.
   "I can not only see that tree, I can see the individual leaves on it." She looked at me triumphantly. "Can you see them?"
   I nodded.
   She didn't seem to believe me. "The individual leaves? I mean, not just the branches but each little leaf?"
   I nodded. Lori looked at me and then burst into tears.

The Glass Castle - Pg 61

   Then he pointed to the top of the fire, where the snapping yellow flames dissolved into an invisible shimmery heat that made the desert beyond seem to waver, like a mirage. Dad told us that zone was known in physics as the boundary between turbulence and order. "It's a place where no rules apply, or at least they haven't figured 'em out yet."

The Glass Castle - Pg 34

   I wondered if the fire had been out to get me. I wondered if all fire was related, like Dad said all humans were related, if the fire that had burned me that day while I cooked hot dogs was somehow connected to the fire I had flushed down the toilet and the fire burning at the hotel. I didn't have the answers to those questions, but what I did know was that I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire.

The Glass Castle - Pg 27

   Dad swam after Mom, and right there in the water, he told her he was going to marry her. Twenty-three men had already proposed to her, Mom told Dad, and she had turned them all down. "What makes you think I'd accept your proposal?" she asked.
   "I didn't propose to you," Dad said. "I told you I was going to marry you."
   Six months later, they got married.

The Glass Castle - Pg 23

   Dad drove fast and sang really loud, and locks of his hair fell into his face and life was a little bit scary but still a lot of fun.

The Glass Castle - Pg 16

   I lit a match and held it close to Tinkerbell's face to show her how it felt. She looked even more beautiful in the flame's glow. When that match went out, I lit another one, and this time I held it really close to Tinkerbell's face. Suddenly, her eyes grew wide, as if with fear; I realized, to my horror, that her face was starting to melt. I put out the match, but it was too late.

The Glass Castle - Pg 15

   The neighbor lady who had driven me to the hospital was surprised that I didn't run in the opposite direction from any fire I saw. "Why the hell would she?" Dad bellowed with a proud grin. "She already fought the fire once and won."

COMBACK LOVE - PETER GOLDEN

Comeback Love - Pg 275

   "Will you—will you ever forgive me?"
   I shifted my eyes to the road. "Yes."
   "When?"
   "I already forgave you."
   "Then what is it?"
   "I just haven't forgotten how much it hurts to lose you."

Comeback Love - Pg 256

   I pressed myself against the dips and swells of her body, determined to take whatever air Glenna would relinquish into my constricted lungs, and I kissed her, deeply, greedily, and she kissed me in return, generous Glenna, sharing her cognac-sweetened breath with me.
   Yet, for an instant, I wasn't sure if I was kissing Glenna or a recent acquaintance from an airport bar. It was strange and exciting and painfully disappointing, because I desperately wanted it to be Glenna, and I drew back from her and opened my eyes.

Comeback Love - Pg 230

   I don't know precisely what I'd been searching for since returning to the World, but when I glanced in the mirror, my face had the tense expression of someone who was growing weary of the search.

Comeback Love - Pg 217

   "She examines me, and I'm starring in the usual med-student horror show, convinced that I'm about to be diagnosed with Hodgkin's, leukemia, or cancer—either osteosarcoma or multiple myelome—I know I've got one of them. Then the doc says I'm fine, and I burst into tears. She pats my hand, and I ask her when the aching will stop. She says, 'Why, dear girl, you'll have to wait till you fall in love again.'"

Comeback Love - Pg 208

   "I want to talk to you," she said, a sentence that has probably, in various languages, preceded most every heartbreak since the Stone Age. "I did some thinking in Florida."
   "That's a lousy idea," I replied, telling myself that if I cracked wise for another hour and fifty minutes, 1969 would be 1970, and a whole new decade might furnish her with a rationale to reconsider.

Comeback Love - Pg 178

   "Well, she's sick in love with you. That's why she's such a pain in the ass."
   I felt vaguely unfaithful talking to Robin about Glenna, and yet it was comforting. "Explain."
   "Say you have everything. You're smart, gorgeous, guys chase you. Then you fall in love—not the puppified variety. Now you have a lot to lose that you're not in charge of, and so it stops feeling like you have everything."

Comeback Love - Pg 166

   She was moving as though the rhythm of the music had somehow gotten inside her and was now trying to get out, shifting her side to side, as if she were being buffeted by waves of summer air... Her eyes were shut and aimed toward the rays of light filtering through the leaves or the trees, and a small smile was on her face, a strange smile, as much sadness in it as happiness, and as her hips rotated under the peach cotton in perfect time to the bittersweet melody, I felt frightened and jealous, as if Glenna had betrayed me by making love to the sun and sky—by dancing alone, encased in the music, on that grassy, sunstruck patch of Washington Square, happy all by herself.

Comeback Love - Pg 126

   The streetlamps always seemed to be on, and the smoky-blue darkness was always descending as softly as the snow, through which Glenna and I lightly stepped, with a delicious symmetry to our wills and our wishes that would not survive the spring.

Comeback Love - Pg 109

   I told Glenna that I loved her, and she said, "I love you, too, Gordo. So much."
   I pressed myself against her warm, milky skin and couldn't believe my good fortune. Yet it would be some time before I understood that this was precisely the problem, the beginning of our end, that Glenna loved me.
   So much.

Comeback Love - Pg 106

   She pummeled my shoulders with her fists, releasing the hurt she'd brought back from Riverdale, another hurt heaped onto the years of hurt, screaming, "Fuck you, you fucking bastard!" and me straying through that turbulent darkness, lost now, disappearing into the terrifying uncertainty of where I began and Glenna ended, and no longer caring about the distinction, just surrendering myself to the ecstatic rhythm of her rage.

Comeback Love - Pg 82

   Glenna was calling my name, summoning me to a place I was fast approaching, and neither of us lasted too long, not on this dazzling afternoon, in the drowsy, pine-scented air, with a golden light shining through the trees, and a breeze whispering over us, and I heard myself call back to her, and there was a long, sweet pause—perfect stillness—and when it was over, Glenna and I were wrapped up together, gasping, holding on, each of us inside the other.

Comeback Love - Pg 75

   At last, she spotted me, then smiled with an uninhibited joy she hadn't shown me before, and for the briefest of moments I was certain that she loved me. Later, I'd be haunted by the possibility that I'd fallen in love with Glenna alone, fallen in love with the reflection of my own appetite to be loved... but not at that moment.

Comeback Love - Pg 74

   Glenna said, "I feel like there's not enough room in my life for me. Like I want more space and can't get it."
   "Can't get it? Why?"
   "Because then I'll lose you."

Comeback Love - Pg 74

   She gave up and stared out the windshield, focusing on that place I imagined she saw in her sleep, her own badlands, all dust and sorrow.

Comeback Love - Pg 73

   She was entwining her body with mine, huddling into me as if seeking shelter, whispering, "I don't want to lose you."
   I was stunned that Glenna was scared of losing me, for I had thought it was the other way around, and though I was too clouded with sleep to answer, I held her tighter, drawing her close enough so that in my mind we became a single sculpture of flesh and bone, impossible to separate.

Comeback Love - Pg 54

   Her breathy murmuring thrilled me, a wondrously intimate sound, and I lost myself in the cadence of her breath, and soon the room was scented with the bouquet of our bodies, and our breathing was a persistent song, becoming part of the music on the stereo as the album played again and again.

Comeback Love - Pg 53

   I knew that I should get on with it, but I didn't want this moment to end, didn't want to turn it into a different moment, maybe better, but not this exact moment, with its boundless promise, its serenity, its grace.

Comeback Love - Pg 43

   I'm sure that she said some other things, but I can't recall, because by the time I'd parked on Bleecker, and we were walking to Little Italy, Glenna had stuffed my heart in the lusciously curved back pocket of her bell-bottoms.

Comeback Love - Pg 32

   I was afraid she'd say no, and not only because she was good looking enough to frighten just about any guy. It was that talking about the future with her had made me feel as though I'd actually have one, and if she said no, then what would I have?

Comeback Love - Pg 31

   "I want to get my life down on paper and make it behave—or at least understand more of it. I think I can do that in short stories or a novel. And that would be interesting. Like traveling but you don't have to go anywhere except inside your head."

Comeback Love - Pg 29

   "Vicky sang 'Moon River' as if it was part folk song, part prayer. I was thrilled she was up onstage, but her singing scared me. She sang 'Moon River' as if she knew more about longing than anyone on earth."

Comeback Love - Pg 20

   Suddenly I had the dizzying sensation of bouncing from the past to the present and back again. I stood there, unable to move, frozen by memory's guile, its sad and evil magic.

Comeback Love - Pg 5

   Someone once said a photograph is a far cry from a memory. I'm not so sure this is true because I remember looking through the viewfinder of the Minolta on that breezy, sunlit Saturday, smelling the woodsmoke rising from the white brick chimney of the hotel, and thinking that no matter what became of us, I would love Glenna—and be haunted by her—forever.

Comeback Love - Pg 5

   She is smiling, and yet doesn't seem happy, appears suspicious instead, and to this day I don't know if it was happiness she didn't trust or me.

Comeback Love - Pg 5

   I could have used my skills to uncover far more about her. But I didn't want to ruin my vision of Glenna: beautiful, available, and willing to concede that she, too, was subject to this strange power that had kept us connected across so many years.