"I was twenty-one and on my way to be a fiction writer" (Chapter 1, pg. 1.)

"She could talk. She could talk on the nature of truth and beauty for hours, and after all, what novel or poem or play in an Introduction to Literature class couldn't benefit from a truth-and-beauty discussion?" (Chapter 2, pg. 18.)

"Grasshoppers and hares find the ants and tortoises. They need us to survive, but we need them as well" (Chapter 2, pg. 20.)

"Iowa City in the eighties was never going to be Paris in the twenties, but we gave it our best shot" (Chapter 2, pg. 23.)

"I left the house where I lived with someone who loved me to go to the house of someone who did not love me at all" (Chapter 4, pg. 45.)

"Our friendship was like our writing in some ways. It was the only thing that was interesting about our otherwise very dull lives" (Chapter...