“I'm here for several reason, Mr. Pepin, first of all for aid. When something tragic happens in our skies, we do our utmost to extend sympathy. But sympathy without action,that's an empty emotion. Mainly I'm here for the purposes of reentry.""I don't understand.""Adjustment," Harold said, "to earth. I'm here to make sure you didn't leave your whole life in the sky.”

“Of all the thoughts we think, it's only those that actually manifest themselves that seem significant. But the thoughts just before the event are like the fortune in the cookie. The fortune's as random as the thought." - Nathan Harold”

“We tell stories of other people's marriages, Detective Hastroll thought. We are experts in their parables and parabolas. Be can we tell the story of our own. If we could, Hastroll thought, there might be no murders. If we could, we might avoid our own cruelties and crimes.”

“The heart," he said, "is half criminal. The trick is to be vigilant. To keep your eyes open, so if you get a look at this side of yourself you can make a positive ID.”

“People think of travel, of movement, as a kind of reprieve from life. But they're wrong. Movement isn't a reprieve. There is no reprieve. Movement is our permanent state.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, if you ask someone to marry you and the person pukes, that's a sign.”

“You know, as I've grown older, my ideas about sin have changed. I used to believe that sins were things you did, but I don't think that now. I think sins are what you ignore.”