“...while the others--those who wanted him to stay, to hold the line, to become the brink, but no farther--felt viable now with disgust for the shouters: they wanted the man to save himself, step backward into the arms of the cops instead of the sky.”

“He looks like the sort of man who can't afford to leave, and doesn't want to stay, and so he is doing both at once.”

“...a domino line of laughter, but with an edge to it, a longing, an awe, and many of the watchers realized with a shiver that no matter what they said, they really wanted to witness a great fall, see someone arc downward all that distance, to disappear from the sight line, fail, smash to the ground, and give the Wednesday an electricity, a meaning, that all they needed to become a family was one millisecond of slippage”

“It was the dilemma of the watchers: they didn't want to wait around for nothing at all, some idiot standing on the precipice of the towers, but they didn't want to miss the moment either, if he slipped, or got arrested, or dove, arms stretched.”

“Some people think love is the end of the road, and if you're lucky enough to find it, you stay there. Other people say it just becomes a cliff you drive off, but most people who've been around awhile know it's just a thing that changes day by day, and depending on how much you fight for it, you get it, or you hold on to it, or you lose it, but sometimes it's never even there in the first place.”

“It was America, after all. The sort of place where you should be allowed to walk as high as you wanted. But what if you were the one walking underneath? What if the tightrope walker really had fallen? It was quite possible that he could have killed not just himself, but a dozen people below. Recklessness and freedom - how did they become a cocktail?”

“--A priest? I said. --A monk or some such. One of those worker guys. Liberation theowhateveritis. --Theologian, said the other. --One of those guys who thinks that Jesus was on welfare.”