“Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever.”

“[…] his own father told him that talent is sort of a dark gift, that talent is its own expectation: it is there from the start and either lived up to or lost.”

“Loneliness comes suddenly like waves and recedes just as fast. That continues on forever. It’s the same for you. It’s the same for everyone.”

“The beach has a language of its own, with its undulating ribbons of silt, the imponderable hieroglyphs of bird tracks. The receding waves catch on innumerable holes in the sand. Bubbles form and fade. A new language, with a new alphabet...”

“If we are still discussing its merits tomorrow, I will agree with you," said Diagoras."Cheer up, laddie. Nobody lives forever.""Oh I expect you will, Druss, Old Horse. It's the mortals around you who always seem to kiss the granite.”

“Have a father who lived up to his own promise and then found thing after thing to meet and surpass the expectations of his promise in, and didn't seem just a whole hell of a lot happier or tighter wrapped than his own failed father, leaving you yourself in a kind of feral and flux-ridden state with respect to talent.”