Long summer evenings

Instead of  being dusk, six o'clock had the look of mid-afternoon in these fabulously long days of early northern summer when it stayed light until eleven. Staying out as the day pushed toward midnight was like playing hooky from the regular rules of clocks.

Carol Anshaw, Carry the One (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 102. (This scene is in Amsterdam.)

Missing drugs

Most people think drugs just waste your time and screw up your life. They don't understand the happiness. They think you're off drugs a few months, a few years, you forget about them, put them behind you and good riddance, but this is not the way it goes. Drugs have mass  and  density. Thick and delicious, they fill every crevice inside you. They offer absolute comfort and well-being,  In reverse, their absence leaves you empty and arid. 

Sober, he had to keep busy and purposeful, always moving. If he stopped, he immediately heard the sandstorm inside himself, and it terrified him.

Carol Anshaw, Carry the One (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 86

A woman, a man, and two fancy cats

They were not ordinary cats, not ordinary pets. They were Himalayans, white with puckered faces and long, ornate names on their pedigree papers. In their regular life  around the house, Olivia called them Eggdrop and Chop Suey. Nick hated both the prestigious pedigree stuff and these over-cute names. He didn't much care for the cats either as far as that went.

Olivia adored them. She was as close as she got to happy whenever one or the other won a ribbon. She fussed over them at  home. She found their behavior endlessly fascinating. They chased a tied-up pair of  pantyhose across the floor! They sat in a box! She had concocted intricate personalities she professed to see in them while to Nick, it appeared that they only ate, slept, batted around sparkle balls, and were almost totally indifferent to Nick's and Olivia's presence in their lives. The cats were part of the ticket price to Olivia. He'd keep buffalos, if that would make her stay.

Carol Anshaw, Carry the One (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 79

What is lesbian love?

She used to imagine love between women as a languid extension of friendship. Something Virginia Woolf-ish involving tea and conversation and sofas and afternoon eliding into evening, a small lamp needing to be turned on, but left unlit. And so she was brought up shot by [her sister] Alice's exhausting—even just to witness—passion for Maude, her desolation since Maude walked out of her life.

Carol Anshaw, Carry the One (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 63

Bad parents not that bad

Horace and Loretta were fairly terrible, narcissistic parents, there was no arguing that, but they weren't Pol Pot, they weren't Idi Amin. Or at least they were confined to a smaller stage.

Carol Anshaw, Carry the One (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), p.

People as tourist attractions

He [Nick] enjoyed moving through experiences, traveling without having to go anywhere. Other people and their lives were countries he visited. So far, Olivia's main attraction, her local color, was the way she was always subtly touching him. The other excellent thing about her, of course, was her easy access to drugs.

Carol Anshaw, Carry the One (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 6

"Oh, my aunts really want it," he [Matt, the groom] said. "I couldn't say no to them." Carmen could see these women gathering, clutching their Instamatics, tears already pooling int he corners of their eyes, tourists on an emotional safari, eager to bag a bride. 

Id., p. 7

Solace in star gazing

He loved this--lying on top of the camper, looking through his very old Nikon binoculars, . . . He could watch the lazy way he did when he first noticed stars, before he saw them up close through a Newtonian reflector, or read them by their radio waves, before he knew their chemical composition, the weight and age of their gases, the rate at which they were burning themselves up--back when they still held a blinks mystery.

He read the heavens like a worn page  of a favorite book. He picked out constellations of the summer northern sky--Scorpius, Hercules with it's brilliant star Vega, the harder-to-find  Corona Borealis. Arcturus, a showman star, burning it's heart out. And even though he  knew better, knew that what he saw was still roiling and burning and exploding  and being born, also dying an icy death, he could still calm himself by  doing this sort of casual, Boy Scout survey, finding  everything superficially in  place.

Carol Anshaw, Carry the One (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), pp. 75-76