'Use Me' is a wonderfully satisfying book.

He flipped through the biggest book imaginable, the dictionary, a book that contained and explained every word in the language, he said. The print was so small it looked like print for a mouse to read.

Betty ran to the door in time to see a handsome young man dashing through the rain toward the house beside her daughter, both of them in pants embroidered with sea creatures – blue whales on his yellow pants, pink lobsters on her ill-fitting brick red pants – and matching pastel green cotton sweaters. When did Miranda buy such odd clothes? She imagined the two of them spotting eachother somewhere, kindred spirits, and starting up a conversation about their shared hobby of Extreme Wasp Attire.

One really understands testicles after reading ‘The Family Jewels,’ and one is gratified.

As Manhattan came into view, she experienced what she always felt on approaching the city from JFK; a mixture of excitement and calm, a sense of totality; of perfect, living, vibrant, chaotic peace.

All these years I’ve had a story in my mind, the story about us that never really existed. And because of that story, I’ve kept you framed up on the wall in a little box of nostalgic moonlight.

a letter ... changes utterly the moment it slips inside an envelope. It stops being mine. It becomes yours. What I mean is gone. What you understand is all that remains.

The honeysuckle was everywhere the day the letter arrived, like heat. Wild roses bloomed in hedges of tendrils and perfume. There were fat bees, dirigible bees, plump and miniature. It was a sweet, tangled morning, and the sun rose, leisurely, in a spectacular blush.

Elinor Lipman tweets like a nightingale with an eagle eye.

I love my bed. It is larger than a desk and better designed to hold books and papers. It is softer than a desk and better designed for naps. It is the center of all good things. And day or night, everyone knows where to find me.