“He had already come to see human lives as one single communal life and it was perhaps this perception that gave him hope.”

“Despite everything he had or might have (except, of course, another human being), life gave no promise of improvement or even of change. The way things shaped up, he would live out his life with no more than he already had. And how many years was that? Thirty, maybe forty if he didn’t drink himself to death. The thought of forty more years of living as he was made him shudder”

“With age comes wisdom, with wisdom comes perception, with perception comes how you view life, how you view life comes how you handle life, and how you handle life comes how you will dictate the way you live for the rest of your life.”

“Gary had hoped to find her more cooperative. He already had one "alternative" sibling and he didn't need another. It frustrated him that people could so happily drop out of the world of conventional expectations; it felt like a unilateral rewriting, to his disadvantage, of the rules of life.”

“He's an artist in London. We don't see him much."Tom gave him one of his quick, considering glances and asked, "Doesn't he live with you?""No," said Indigo, finally saying out loud what he had known now for a long, long time. "Not really. Not anymore.”

“He smelled the salt on his own lips and the orange blossoms in her hair. Real ones, he could see now, tucked into the curls with cheap, native combs. The sight of them gave him hope.”