Status Updates From Granta Books The Seaplane o...

„There are a couple of situations that are ideal for touring your memories: the quiet three minutes after takeoff on a commercial flight, and when you're trying to fall asleep. The first makes you keenly aware of the possibility of a quick death, and the other makes you aware of the likelihood of one that comes slowly.“

„What morphine was like was this: it was like having a snow day in middle school, …and you're relieved, because you're growing so hard you frequently feel a deep skeletal ache and you're desperately tired. And you snuggle your face into your pillow and inhale, exhale, until you're breathing at the cadence of a sleeping person even though you're not quite asleep, so you hold off sleep just a little…“

„Polly loved animals, which is something I didn't understand until I became friends with a woman who loved, above all things, her dog. She said to me, "I could never date a man who didn't love animals." I think this meant she was looking for someone with the ability to love without keeping a tally system of faults and grievances and items owed and affection earned. I can't be sure; her dog bit me.“

„I believed that there were two kinds of men: men with one-syllable names know that their names are being squealed in a moment of ecstasy without pretense, and men with long names know that their names come out of the mouths of their partners after careful, loving forethought. It was easier, of course, for a man with a one-syllable name to be sleazy.“

„I came to a new conclusion about sleaze, right there on the floor: sleaze required the domestic as much as it needed danger. […] But sleaze isn't sleazy until it's judged and reprimanded. It needs a tether.
The ideal location, then, to attract sleaze was in proximity to danger and the honeytrap of domesticity.“