“I cannot say what color Lenore Beadsman’s eyes are; I cannot look at them; they are the sun to me.”

“Mr. Bloemker moved closer. He smelled like a wet diaper. “What is it,” he asked, looking over Lenore’s shoulder.“If it’s what I think it is,” said Lenore, “it’s a sort of joke. A what do you call it. An antinomy.”“An antinomy?”Lenore nodded. “Gramma really likes antinomies. I think this guy here,” looking down at the drawing on the back of the label, “is the barber who shaves all and only those who do not shave themselves.”Mr. Bloemker looked at her. “A barber?”“The big killer question,” Lenore said to the sheet of paper, “is supposed to be whether the barber shaves himself. I think that’s why his head’s exploded, here.”“Beg pardon?”“If he does, he doesn’t, and if he doesn’t, he does.”

“JAY: No really. Be secure. Pretend I'm a sperm cell. Here. I take the string out of the... hood of my sweatshirt, affix it to my behind for a tail, like so...LENORE: What in God's name are you doing?JAY: Pretend, Lenore. Be an ovum. Be strong. Let me hypothetically batter at you. Batter batter. Surrender to the unreal of the real interior.LENORE: Are you supposed to be a sperm, wriggling your sweatshirt-string like that?JAY: I can feel the strength of your membrane, Lenore.”

“I never, even for a moment, doubted what they’d told me. This is why it is that adults and even parents can, unwittingly, be cruel: they cannot imagine doubt’s complete absence. They have forgotten.”

“Te quiero, Lenore. No hay odio en lo que siento por ti. Únicamente la tristeza intensa que me provoca mi incapacidad para explicarlo o describirlo”

“If I understand you right,' he says, 'you're saying that you're basically a calculating manipulative person who always says what you think will get somebody to approve of you or form some impression of you you think you want.' I told him that was maybe a little simplistic but basically accurate, and he said further that as he understood it I was saying that I felt as if I was trapped in this false way of being and unable ever to be really open and tell the truth irregardless of whether it'd make me look good in others' eyes or not. And I somewhat resignedly said yes, and that I seemed always to have had this fraudulent, calculating part of my brain firing way all the time, as if I were constantly playing chess with everybody and figuring out that if I wanted them to move a certain way I had to move in such a way as to induce them to move that way. He asked if I ever played chess, and I told him I used to in middle school but quit because I couldn't be as good as I eventually wanted to be, how frustrating it was to get just good enough to know what getting really good at it would be like but not being able to get that good, etc.”

“He said he didn’t think Lenore should go to the G.O.D."Nobody ever finds anybody in a place like that," he said, "People don’t go to a place like that to look for other people. That’s the opposite of the whole concept that’s behind the thing.”