“Do," said Louisa finally, "whatever you can't not do.”

“Writing poetry's,' I looked around the solarium, but Madame Crommelynck's got a tractor beam, 'sort of . . . gay.' '"Gay"? A merry activity?' This was hopeless. 'Writing poems is . . . what creeps and poofters do.' 'So are you one of these „creeps”? 'No.' 'Then you are a „pooof-ter”, whatever one is?' 'No!' 'Then your logic is eluding me.”

“I'm shoutin' back more'n forty long years at myself, yay,...Oy, list'n! Times are you're weak 'gainst the world! Times are you can't do nothin'! That ain't your fault, it's this busted world's fault is all! But no matter how loud I shout, ...he don't hear me nor never will.”

“Novelists don’t have answers and ones that do I'm not sure you should trust.”

“Well, Hae-Joo probed, what did I do to relax? I play Go against my sony, I said."To relax?" he responded, incredulous. "Who wins, you or the sony?"The sony, I answered, or how would I ever improve?So winners, Hae-Joo proposed, are the real losers because they learn nothing? What, then, are losers? Winners?I said, If losers can xploit what their adversaries teach them, yes, losers can become winners in the long term.”

“And for What, For What. No matter what you do it will never amount to anything but a single drop in a limitless ocean. What is an ocean but a multitude of drops.”

“Do ants get headaches?”