“Well, it was most likely too late; there would not be time for me to flagellate myself for every dishonorable deed in that list, nor any chance to make good the harms I’d done. Minor harms, to be sure, in the scheme of things; but large enough to regret.”

“Part of me thinks we're fools to trust either of the, Hapexamendios or His Reconciler. If He was such a loving God, why did He do so much harm? And don't tell me He moves in mysterious ways because that's so much horse shit and we both know it. ”

“I'm an inclusionist. I've always divided up (very, very broadly, I admit) the artistic instincts into the inclusionist and the exclusionist. The exclusionist is Raccine. The inclusionist is Shakespeare. I've always felt like I'd prefer to throw 45 things into the pot and hope that maybe 36 of them will taste good. You may choke on 9 of them. I'd rather do that than only have half that number of elements and each one perfect. That's because I know that people choke on different things.... I think that when I was a kid, the experience of things, the experience of just finding words for things, of finding somebody else's world and being able to leap into it and, like any world, you pick up the geography instantly. You expected the thing to unfold, you expected there to be valleys that upon entering that world you were barely aware of. For me a novel, particularly a large novel, one you put down at the end and think, 'Hell, that was interesting. I'm not sure I understood Chapters X, Y and Z, but maybe next time I read it or talk to someone about it, I will'... that's a very different experience to the immaculately formed, beautifully honed, finished 'art' thing.”

“As to my mouth, of all my features, I wish I could possess my mouth again, just as it had been before the fire. I had my mother’s lips, generous below and above; and what kissing I had practiced, mainly on my hand or on a lonely pig, had convinced me that my lips would be the source of my good fortune. I would kiss with them, and lie with them, I would make victims and willing slaves of anyone my eyes desired, simply by talking a little, and following the talk with kisses, and the kisses with demands. And they’d melt into compliance, everyone of them, happy to perform the most demeaning acts as long as I was there to reward them with a long, tongue-tied kiss when they were done. But the fire didn’t spare my lips; it took them too, erasing them utterly.”

“Here is a list of terrible things,The jaws of sharks, a vultures wingsThe rabid bite of the dogs of war,The voice of one who went before,But most of all the mirror's gaze,Which counts us out our numbered days.”

“My father used to say: Every bird is one bird, and every book is one book, and every bird and every book is one thing too, under the words and the feathers." He finished with a flourish, as though the meaning of this was self-evident.”

“Well, here he was. They could save each other, the way the poets promised lovers should. He was mystery, he was darkness, he was all she had dreamed of. And if she would only free him he would service her - oh yes - until her pleasure reached that threshold that, like all thresholds, was a place where the strong grew stronger, and the weak perished. Pleasure was pain there, and vice versa. And he knew it well enough to call it home.”