“... The women's song was always the same, as monotonous as the beating of the waves against the beach: loss, loss. The conch offered them no enchantment. When they put their ear to it, all they heard was the echo of their mourning.”

“There shall come a day when all the women in the world will lie in the gutter screaming for cock,' he intoned. 'But not an inch shall they be given!''Am I to understand,' Knud Erik asked, 'that nobody wanted to screw you?”

“As he passed through the dining room, he stopped and took a white daisy from the bouqet his housekeeper had placed in the middle of the table..and put the daisy in the buttonhole of his summer jacket. Then he opened the front door and walked down the steps to Prinsegade, filled with the blind triumph that people sometimes experience when they've conquered their own better judgment.”

“We thought we knew everything about him. But that's not how life is. When all's said and done, we can never truly know one another.”

“When it came to choosing between education and religion, Albert said, he'd choose education every time. The school represented young people and the future - and the church didn't. If the school in Vestergade was bigger than the church, so much the better. Any town that believed in the future should take note.”

“From now on, consider yourself a con artist.”

“That's how it is, he told himself. If you dread something enough, even your worst fears coming true brings comfort.”