“Maybe the man had taken the wrong turning, but at least he'd travelled some extraordinary roads.”

“Why'd you want to sing about sad things?" Candy had asked him."Because any fool can be happy," he'd said to her."It takes a man with real heart"—he'd made a fist and laid it against his chest—"to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.”

“The extraordinary's the norm.”

“She had opened a door... and now she was walking with demons. And at the end of her travels, she would have her revenge... Pain had made a sadist of her.”

“It was as though in these last minutes together--when they had so much to say--they could say nothing of the least significance, for fear it open the floodgates.”

“We have great cities to visit: New York and Washington, Paris and London; and further east, and older than any of these, the legendary city of Samarkand, whose crumbling palaces and mosques still welcome travelers on the Silk road. Weary of cities? Then we’ll take to the wilds. To the islands of Hawaii and the mountains of Japan, to forests where Civil War dead still lie, and stretches of sea no mariner ever crossed. They all have their poetry: the glittering cities and the ruined, the watery wastes and the dusty; I want to show you them all. I want to show you everything.”

“Where else can bubble-gum hearts, the dream travellers, the serial killers, and the occasional guest-star from beyond the grave occupy the same space?”