“You have to see fate as a design, a pattern, and the will as the knife, the blade, the thing slicing through the fabric...”

“eventually these encounters forced him to acknowledge the reality of fate, and the truth inherent in things of the imagination.”

“It was only when you left it alone that a tree might treat you as a friend. After the blade bit in, you had yourself a war.”

“A child, I'm miserable admitting it, a child stands like a priest under his father's sky. Why do you fate me to fail you?”

“[The doctor] peeked into the trauma room and saw the situation: the clerk - that is, me - standing next to the orderly, Georgie, both of us on drugs, looking down at a patient with a knife sticking up out of his face. 'What seems to be the trouble?' he asked.”

“People entering the bars on First Avenue gave up their bodies. Then only the demons inhabiting us could be seen. Souls who had wronged each other were brought together here. The rapist met his victim, the jilted child discovered its mother. But nothing could be healed, the mirror was a knife dividing everything from itself, tears of false fellowship dripped on the bar. And what are you going to do to me now? With what, exactly, would you expect to frighten me?”

“Will you believe me when I tell you there was kindness in his heart? His left hand didn't know what his right hand was doing. It was only that certain important connections had been burned through. If I opened up your head and ran a hot soldering iron around in your brain, I might turn you into someone like that.”