“I was here, & now, but I was also swimming in the past, living these same motions we'd made so many times before.”

“It's so easy to wish that we'd made an effort in the past, so that we'd happily be enjoying the benefit now, but when now is the time when that effort must be made, as it always is, that prospect is much less inviting.”

“It wasn't an attack. We'd been together too many times before, made love together too many times before, for it to be that. It was just that fear had suddenly entered, and made us dangerous strangers.("New York Blues")”

“Nothing happens here except the past in slow motion. We’re starting to go backwards, you and I.”

“A map such as that one is worth many hundreds, and as luck will have it, thousands of dollars. But more than this, it is a remembrance of that time before our planet was so small. When this map was made, I thought, you could live without knowing where you were not living.”

“I resent that the hours seem boring now, emptier. Going through the motions gives you plenty of time to examine the motions. I used to find this interesting. Now it has taken on the taint of meaninglessness. [...] This is the trap of having something to live for: Everything else seems lifeless.”