“Basically, I realized, I was living in that awful stage of life from the age of twenty-six to thirty-seven known as stupidity. It’s when you don’t know anything, not even as much as you did when you were younger, and you don’t even have philosophy about all the things you don’t know, the way you did when you were younger, and you don’t even have a philosophy about all the things you didn’t know, the way you did when you were twenty or would again when you were thirty-eight – Nonetheless you tried things out: "love is the cultural exchange program of futility and eroticism.” I said.
And Eleanor would say, “Oh how cynical can you get,” meaning not nearly cynical enough. I had made it sound dreadful but somehow fair, like a sleepaway camp. “Being in love with Gerard is like sleeping in the middle of the freeway,” I tried.
“Thatta girl,” said Eleanor. “Much better.”
Lorre Moore, “Anagrams”