“An enormous emotion beat on him; it was like something trying to get in, the pressure of gigantic wings against the glass. Dona nobis pacem. He withstood it, with all the bitter force of the school bench, the cement playground, the St. Pancras waiting room, Dallow's and Judy's secret lust, and the cold and unhappy moment on the pier. If the glass broke, if the beast--whatever it was--got in, God knows what it would do. He had a sense of huge havoc--the confession, the penance, and the sacrament--an awful distraction, and he drove blind into the rain.”

“There was nothing like an extra helping of guilt to cool a man's blood.And it was guilt as much as the hot food and the glass of good wine that got Brian through the evening in the Grant kitchen. The size of it left little room for lust, considering.There was Adelia Grant giving him a warm greeting as if he was welcome to swing in for dinner anytime he had the whim, and Travis getting out an extra plate himself-as if he waited on employees five days a week-and saying that there was plenty to go around as Brendon had other plans for dinner.Before he knew it, he was sitting down, having food heaped in front of him and being asked how his day had been.And not in a way that expected a report.He didn't know what to do about it. He liked these people, genuinely liked them. And there he was lusting after their daughter. An alley mutt after a registered purebred.”

“That is the fear: I have lost something important, and I cannot find it, and I need it. It is fear like if someone lost his glasses and went to the glasses store and they told him that the world had run out of glasses and he would just have to do without.”

“He, too, had been glassed-in for a long time, by choice. Now and then he had lifted a hammer to shatter through to something, but he had never struck the blow because he didn't know what he wanted on the other side of the glass.”

“I thought: That is the fear: I have lost something important, and I cannot find it, and I need it. It is fear like if someone lost his glasses and went to the glasses store they told him that the world had run out of glasses and he would just have to do without.”

“[He] turned his back on the window, not knowing why he had gone to it, not knowing what he hoped to see, and just at that moment, when there was no one at the window any more and only a little lamp of colored glass at the back of the room flickering, it appeared.”