"I ain't a thug, how much Tupac in you you got?"

"The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding."

"She upset Billy simply by being his mother."

"She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all."

"Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops."

"The dinner party was breaking up. A chorus of good nights floated up into the dark"

"I feel the same way about getting laid as I feel about going to college: I'm being pressured into it."