“The human heart will clock approximately 3 billionbeats over an average lifetime. Not Johnny here, though. Just sevenhundred and nineteen million, eight hundred and ninety-eightthousand, six hundred and five, and a half.”

“A long time ago, the act of another put the dark in his veins, and it's been there ever since. The night he lost his true love, his heart and his brain became one, so that his heart was scheming and his brain was loving. 'That doesn't sound so bad', my dream-self thought, but suddenly I could feel it, and it was very bad indeed—for when a brain loves, it is only out of obsession, and when a heart schemes, it does not mean well.”

“Men with power had the responsibility to know what was best, and they so rarely did.”

“As we walked, Lara ratted off statistics that I only half listened to. They were unbelievable anyway.Over a million cubic feet of living space. More than three hundred rooms, thirty-one of which were kitchens. Ninety-eight bathrooms. Three hundred and fifty-nine windows. Two thousand four hundred and seventy-six lightbulbs.”

“When a glass sits on a table here, people don't wonder if it's half filled or half empty. They just hope it's good beer.”

“Why, my client wondered, would a guy like me make his living like this? Well, you'd think the three hundred dollars he paid just to watch me take a shower would have given him a clue.”

“Every time you go in, it's like starting over. You don't know how you did the other records. You're learning all over. It's some weird musician amnesia, or maybe the road wipes it out.”