“Success went fizzily to Bernard's head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory. In so far as it recognized him as important, the order of things was good.”

“She loves him the way a mother should love their child. Thoroughly. Completely. To her, he's the most important person in the world and I'm so very happy they have that.”

“Love so strong, without ebb and flow or crests and troughs, indeed lacking any sort of motion so that it had become invisible to him these seven years, part of the order of things outside his head which he had taken for granted.”

“Grandpa had a good life, up until the day we slaughtered him and ate him. Honestly, he raised chickens, so he should have seen it coming.
”

“He was very religious; he believed that he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety.”

“Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very last. But the wilderness found him out early, and had taken vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core”