“If he had his wits about him Bunny would surely keep his mouth shut; but now, with his subconscious mind knocked loose from its perch and flapping in the hollow corridors of his skull as erratically as a bat, there was no way to be sure of anything he might do.”

“He had to keep busy; he had to keep moving so that the sinews connected behind his eyes did not slip loose and spin his eyes to the interior of his skull where the scenes waited for him.”

“He wondered if perhaps, subconsciously, he was trying to sabotage her efforts by setting the bar too high, trying to keep her with him longer; but surely his subconscious wasn't that stupid?”

“It's a good thing he broke up with you because now you're free for when the right man finds you. Your prince is on his way.""Right. I'm sure he was on his way but a truck hit him.”

“Looking out over the water, I spotted him right away,straddling his board. He was only a dot, but I would have known him anywhere.I thought of the shape of his hands,the hollow at the base of his spine,the way my heart had never stopped skipping a beat at the sound of his voice, and I realized it was the kind of loss- because I knew now that the thing I wanted more than anything in the world not to go fully wrong could- from which I would never fully recover. And I'm not sure I ever fully have.”

“Crossing your fingers, Neville? Knocking on wood? He ignored that, beginning to suspect his mind of harboring an alien. Once he might have termed it conscience. Now it was only an annoyance. Morality, after all, had fallen with society. He was his own ethic. Makes a good excuse, doesn’t it, Neville? Oh, shut up.”