“When I look at my life and its secret colours, I feel like bursting into tears.”

“I burst into tears and I cry and cry until it feels as though it is not salt and water being squeezed from my eyes, but blood.”

“You once said to me that I talk like a man in a book. I not only talk, but think and feel like one. I have spent my life in books; literature has deeply dyed my brain its own colour. This literary colouring is a protective one--like the brown of the rabbit or the checks of the quail--making it impossible for me to tell where literature ends and I begin.”

“Listen, Dundy, it's been a long time since I burst into tears because a policeman didn't like me.”

“Sometimes I can see colour without opening my eyes. I saw that Billy's heart was no colour and every colour. Like water or diamonds or crystals, it's pure and reflects the light.”

“Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory.”