“Say the point of sex isn’t recreation of procreation or any of that stuff. Say it’s concentration. Say it’s supposed to focus your attention on the person you’re sleeping with--like biological hi-lighter. ... Otherwise, there’s just too many people in the world.”

“It's not brave if your not scared.”

“The absolute negative, the ultimate saying of no to the world, when it is just too late. And always the subtle conviction that if you had said No a moment earlier, it would none of it have happened. But the saying of no comes too late by a little. You are always a little too late in saying it.”

“Sitting for a picture is morbid business. A portrait doesn’t begin to mean anything until the subject is dead. This is the whole point. We’re doing this to create a kind of sentimental past for people in decades to come. It’s their past, their history we’re inventing here. And it’s not how I look now that matters. It’s how I’ll look in twenty-five years as clothing and faces change, as photographs change. The deeper I pass into death, the more powerful my picture becomes. Isn’t this why picture-taking is so ceremonial? It’s like a wake. And I’m the actor made up for the laying-out.”

“It is real, isn’t it? It’s not a joke? Petunia says you’re lying to me. Petunia says there isn’t a Hogwarts. It is real, isn’t it?”“It’s real for us,” said Snape. “Not for her.”

“It’s hard to land a devastating jab/cross/hook/uppercut combo to your reader’s imagination when you’re telegraphing your punches.”

“Getting dumped is crazy times. Like … what? You’re supposed to instantly turn off all your emotions just because he says it’s over? You’re supposed to go on with your life like nothing happened?”