Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

"Finally, I asked how you got a boy to like you back. She said, 'Just be yourself,' as though I had any idea who that might be."

"It isn't you,' he says, as though you're to be comforted by the irrelevant role you play in your own life."

"Archie asked me if I knew Dante's definition of hell..."Proximity without intimacy," he said."

"It occurred to me that the quiet in the suburbs had nothing to do with peace."

"No," he said, and he snapped his fingers. "You'll come work for me at K----. And be a real associate editor."I said, "I could bring you up on charges for that."What"Work harassment in the sexual place."

"Even now, he is every blue blazer getting into cab, every runner along the river,every motorcycle coming and going."

"You will say good-bye for all the right reasons. You're tired of living in wait for his apocalypse. You have your own fight on your hands, and though it's no bigger or more noble than his, it will require all of your energy. It's you who has to hold on to earth. You have to tighten your grip -- which means letting go of him."

"But then you hear that he can't hear you, you see that he can't see you. You are not here--and you haven't even died yet. You see yourself through his eyes, as The Generic Woman, the skirted symbol on the ladies' room door."