“One's ribs shouldn't be prison bars.”

“Maybe then you comprehend, speaking one language only is a prison!”

“But an ink brush, she thinks, is a skeleton key for a prisoner's mind.”

“Right, my phone. When these things first appeared, they were so cool. Only when it was too late did people realize they are as cool as electronic tags on remand prisoners.”

“Just as I was flung over the threshold, I embraced Grigoire the Swiss Fiancé in a rugger grip, determined that smug cockatoo was coming with me...Stone steps and icy pavements bruised my own flesh as black as his, banged my elbows and hips just as hard, but at least mine was not the only ruined evening in Bruges, and I yelled, kicking his ribs once for each word, before half-running, half-hobbling off on my whacked ankle, 'Love hurts!'”

“For white men, to live is to own, or to try to own more, or to die trying to own more. Their appetites are astonishing! They own wardrobes, slaves, carriages, houses, warehouses, and ships. They own ports, cities, plantations, valleys, mountains, chains of islands. They own this world, its jungles, its skies, and its seas. Yet they complain that Dejima is a prison. They complain they are not free.”

“If one will just be still, shut up, and listen--lo, behold, the world'll sift through one's ideas for one, esp. in a grimy London railway station.”