“When his father asked why A wasn't apple or B wasn't bird or C wasn't cat, young Ambrose explained that things didn't always have to be the way you'd expect. Everybody does apples and birds and cats, he said, and it's boring to do what everybody else does.”

“Why do fools fall in love? I'll tell you why, because everybody else has simply got too much else to do.”

“A man can see a hundred women, lust for a thousand more, but it is one scent that will open his eyes and turn him to love.”

“For weeks Octavio returned to the shelter of the trees. The woman would appear as the sun reached midday. She would walk to the edge of the trees, find her chair and drag it to the boat pond. Every Sunday the same chair, the same spot. Every Sunday a book.He needed only one word to imagine a hundred stories: she - was a dancer; cooling her feet after a morning of twists and leaps. was the daughter of a sea captain, remembering her childhood as the toy boats crossed the pond. was an empress hiding among her subjects, shielding her face with a scarf made from the silk of ten thousand worms. Five thousand green, five thousand blue. was a teacher, a lover of learning, patient and gentle with her students.She - was a reader.He had a library.”

“This wasn't a garden,' said Susan presently. 'It was a castle...”

“I frowned. Evidently, Sangris wasn't a cat who could shape-shift. It was more difficult than that. He was a nothing who occasionally pretended to be a cat. "I wish I could know what it's like for myself, that's all," I said. I felt rather the way a jail inmate would if a bird flew up and shouted through her window bars: This freedom thing? Yeah, not so great.”

“We are arguing like a man who should say, if there were an invisible cat in that empty chair, the chair would look empty; but the chair does look empty; therefore there is an invisible cat in it.”