“I had four hundred thousand pages of continental philosophy and lit theory in my head. And by God, I was going to use it to prove to him that I was smarter than he was.”

“When my son, Jack, was four, I had to make a trip to Los Angeles. I asked him if he was going to miss me. 'Not so much,' Jack told me. 'You're not going to miss me?' I said. Jack shook his head, and he said, 'Love means you can never be apart.”

“Thirty three thousand, three hundred and thirty three things. That’s all I need to get by. Oh, and I guess I also need love. Better make that thirty three thousand, three hundred and thirty four.”

“He kept his head down in what seemed to be a prayer. “He counts. You’ve smiled at him four hundred and forty-six times as of a few minutes ago. He announces the number every time I see him.”

“...And a cool four thousand, Pip!"I never discovered from whom Joe derived the conventional temperature of the four thousand pounds, but it appeared to make the sum of money more to him, and he had a manifest relish in insisting on its being cool.”

“I asked once, and the library assistant told me there were more than a hundred thousand books there, and more than sixty million pages of documents. It's a good number, I think: ten pages for every person who died. A kind of monument in paper for people who have no gravestones.”