"He was bookish, she was not; he was theoretical, she political. She called a rose a rose. He called it an accumulation of cultural and biological constructions circulating around the mutually attracting binary poles of nature/artifice."

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“But why do they always have to be laughing and making a song-and-dance about everything? I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.”

“It was in the shady groves of dictionaries that Jack fell in love.”

“He talked and talked, the kind of talking you do to stave off the inevitable physical desire. The kind of talk that only increases it.”

“So we have to be a bit more, I mean, military about it, like plan.”

“Is there anything more likely to take the shine off an affair that when the lover strikes up a convivial relationship with the lovee's mother.”

“This is what divorce is: Taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love.”

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"It was a hard thing to contemplate, even harder to accept, the inevitable tide of technological progress, which even as it created careers for some, also destroyed careers for others."

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