He loved that she eschewed cursive for print, as he did. Cursive, more than anything, betrayed a person’s age.

Greater good is just halfway back to Bad.

...and yet, the only thing about this year, he thinks, the only times that he has been completely honest with himself are on the nights he's spent here. Only among the crowd of the failed has he felt comfortable living inside his own defeat.

[N]ames were what you wore forever, and she felt that she'd sent her daughters out in tacky rabbit fur coats when they should have been wrapped in mink.

Every four years we go through the same cycle of hope and disillusionment.

You don't want to be comforted, do you?" he asks, sadly. "You'd rather be guilty. You know they made up the idea of original sin not to punish but to console us. When all the incomprehensible shit goes down, we can blame ourselves, it was something we did or didn't do. Without guilt, we are irrelevant. And that is so much worse.

Good and Evil are opposite points on a circle, Dr. Chiver. Greater good is just halfway back to Bad.

No woman kills herself for love, and rarely for shame. It is the cruelty of hope that does a woman in; for no matter how many men a woman has given herself to, she never holds her life cheap until she foolishly believed it to be valued.