“Its an onion tree. Every time Sam takes off an onion, two more will grow in its place.”

“Victoria Park looks like every other inner-city park in every other city in Canada; a large and handsome memorial to the war dead surrounded by a square block of hard-tracked grass and benches where people can sit and look at statues of politicians or at flower beds planted with petunias and marigolds, the cheap and the hardy, downtown survivors.”

“The cracked white cups took pink lights as the sun, already descending, slanted across the cherry; the tree filled the air with its heavy scentlessness.”

“Don’t you think every face tells its own story? Like a book? More like a poem. If you study it long enough, you’ll soon find its meaning.”

“A romantic man often feels more uplifted with two women than with one: his love seems to hit the ideal mark somewhere between two different faces.”

“The restaurant was waning, indifferently relaxing its illusion: for the late-comers a private illusion took its place. Their table seemed to stand on their own carpet; they had a sensation of custom, sedateness, of being inside small walls, as though dining at home again after her journey. She told him about her Mount Morris solitary suppers, in the middle of the library, the rim of the tray just not touching the base of the lamp... the fire behind her back softly falling in on its own ash-no it had not been possible to feel lonely among those feeling things.”

“This case is complex. It's got layers to it, Davey. It's a fucking onion... You're a natural-born onion peeler -- the best that ever was.”