“One single equation for the motion of the Moon covers some 250 large-size pages and represents the major effort of a lifetime”

“...it's as if I have just solved Skivver's predictive equations, or even better, as if I have intuited the One Equation, seen the numbers behind the moon and the stars, behind mountains and history, art and death and yearning, as if my comprehension is large enough that it can encompass universes, from the beginning to the end of time.”

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large ego must be in want of a woman to cut him down to size”

“One great love in a single lifetime was enough for anyone.”

“The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.”

“I'm out of the equation, an innocent bystander at the major love affair Joan is having with Joan”