“He was dead. However, his nose throbbed painfully, which he thought odd in the circumstances.”

“Extending his senses, Lorkin tried again to hear his mother’s surface thoughts. What he picked up seemed too out of character, however. He must be imagining it. Though…it was also odd that he would imagine his mother thinking such a string of curse words.”

“A particular train of thought persisted in, be it good or bad, cannot fail to produce its results on the character and circumstances. A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances.”

“Three people are interviewing for a job. The first thinks his odds are 33.3 percent of landing the job. The second guy, so sure of himself, thinks his odds are 100 percent. The third guy, however, knows he has a 50 % chance of getting the job, and a 25 % chance of getting convicted of murder. He likes those odds.”

“For all his pain, he longed to see the author of it. Although he hated Margaret at times, when he thought of that gentle familiar attitude and all the attendant circumstances, he had a restless desire to renew her picture in his mind - a longing for the very atmosphere she breathed. He was in the Charybdis of passion, and must perforce circle and circle ever nearer round the fatal centre.”

“... the perennial outsider with his nose to the window, looking in on a world from which he felt excluded.”