• "He understood me too well and knew that need can overwhelm when it demands that a friendship become the friendship."
• "What does it say about you? Do you think so little of yourself that I would just drop you? Do you think we've been friends all these years because I didn't have anything better to do?"
• "Dating will be men dismissing me because I'm not their type or not pretty enough or something. This is a job. I got hired because of who I am. It's harder to be dismissed because I'm not smart than because I'm not pretty"... Didn't she know me well enough to understand that I'd staked my whole life on being smart? "I have lots of practice at not being pretty enough or thin enough. Dating isn't personal, not like..." But I couldn't finish the sentence. Somewhere in the attic of my brain, I stumbled over the fact that my life had become entirely personal. I'd been hired not for my typing by for my talent, taste, skills record. Was that the entire package of me, or was there more, something only men could answer?"
• You love Haagan-Dazs," i said.. "but you can't have it. You can't have a scoop because you'll eat the whole pint and after that you'll eat everything you lay your hands on. Are you with me?...OK. No Haagen-Dazs. But you have food you can eat, if you weigh and measure it. Even OK food is dangerous. Like your salad dressing. Maybe men are like that. You can't have some of men because you'll eat them up. Some men, you can have, in a sane dose."
• "When wasn't I in love? I risked it every time I opened a new manuscript. I had shelves of lives I'd been seduced by. I knew how to give my heart away. I had been romantic if not romanced. Maybe -just- I knew more than I thought I knew."
• I was consciously contacting men who were... well ... ugly. my reasoning was that if he didn't look like a movie star, surely he would forgive my own physical flaws. Always, always the forgiveness was for my wrinkled sagging venous scarred body.
• Men get away with forty pounds and women don't. Men get away with thinning and/or grey hair and women don't. I didn't think these gender laws were fair but I couldn't fight an entire culture... I was in no position to point my finger at a man's physical flaws. I was only passing for thin, after all, with lots of hair coloring and hot wax supplementing my looks. It would be a hard call to determine the greater liar between us.
• (about being told she was beautiful) 'Did he know that such a compliment would make me snort in disbelief or dismissal, according to how much I liked the man? Did he fear how much convincing I'd need, and that of course I wanted to be convinced?'
• "I feel like such a fake. My body is a wreck from being fat. I feel ashamed talking to men when I know what I rally look like. What can i give them?"
• "Number Seven in the Laws About Men: never try to get back together with someone who's already broken your heart. He knows exactly how to break it again. With silence, with not showing up, with excuses."
• "Apologetically, the Catholic Boy explained the Eighth Law About Men. Men are attracted to a face and a body first. 'It doesn't mean anything,' he said... 'We're men. We look. it doesn't mean we want, but we look.'... He also confirmed a thing I had long suspected was true the Ninth Law: men learn quickly to like what they find beautiful.

-( passing for thin )