“Maybe it was this: The name of a person marked for murder is just a name, but the face makes real the cost of violence, for if we have the nerve to look, we can see in any face our own vulnerability.”

“None of us have a real name, Leonidas, just names we like and names people give us.”

“Hey, manager... Some kid must have left his glove here... It has his name on it... See? Right here... Willie Mays... He wrote his name on his glove, see? Poor kid... He's probably been looking all over for it... We should have a lost and found. I don't know any kid around here named Willie Mays, do you? How are we gonna get it back to him? He was pretty smart putting his name on his glove this way, though... It's funny, I just don't remember any kid by that name...""Look at your own glove.""What?""Look at your own glove... There's a name on it...""Babe Ruth... Well, I'll be! How in the world do you suppose I got her glove?!”

“Laurel could not see her face but only the back of her neck, the most vulnerable part of anybody, and she thought: Is there any sleeping person you can be entirely sure you have not misjudged?”

“Love at first sight is not complicated. In our dreams we build a woman, we give her life from our own life, and then we have to wait. Through trial and error we try to find that nameless ghost that’s haunting our most lonely of nights. And I felt as if I had found what I was looking for. Finally, my ghost had a name and a face.”

“We must never fear robbers or murderers. They are dangers from outside, small dangers. It is ourselves we have to fear. Prejudice is the real robber, vice the real murderer. Why should we be troubled by a threat to our person or our pocket? What we have to beware of is the threat to our souls'.”