“When everything is at risk, good judgment, not haste, makes the difference between life and death. Panic is the enemy.”

“Thought like that showed me the needless ambiguity of words like space-time. The average person heard a word like that and figured he'd never understand it. But it was so simple. Every place you ever saw was linked to a specific time ... the school you visited twenty years after you graduated, the football field you played on, the track you ran -- none of them was the same. If they were, you would collide with the generations that had run on them before and after you. The lover you kissed was not the same person he or she was sixty seconds before. In that minute, a million skin cells had died and been replaced by new ones. The smallest slices of space-time separated thought from action Life from death.”

“I will do those things which make me happy today and which I can also live with ten years from now.”

“Wingate sighs thoughtfully. "Hard to say. He's not static. He began with almost pure Impressionism, which is dead. Anyone can do it. But the vision was there. Between the fifth and twelfth paintings, he began to evolve something much more fascinating. Are you familiar with the Nabis?"The what?"Nabis. It means 'prophets.' Bonnard, Denis, Vuillard?"What I know about art wouldn't fill a postcard."Don't blame yourself. That's the American educational system. They simply don't teach it. Not unless you beg for it. Not even in university.”

“The temptation to second-guess is strong. But I must remember one thing. Life is simple.You are healthy or you are sick. You are faithful to your wife or you aren't. You are alive or you are dead. I am alive.”

“Her touch was as knowing and confident as her eyes, and as she focused all her attention upon me, I remembered that there is nothing so thrilling as a woman of words when she decides that the time for words is past.”

“My favorite book is The Mysterious Island. I order my books from a flimsy catalog the teacher hands out to every student in the class. Emil and the Detectives. White Fang. Like that. Money is tight for us, but when it comes to books my mother is a spendthrift; I can order as many as I like. I sit here day after day, waiting for my books to arrive. My books. It takes a month or more, but when they finally do, when the teacher opens the big box and passes out the orders to the kids, checking the books against a form taken from her desk, I glow with happiness. I've never had the newest dress, or the prettiest, but I always have the tallest stack of books. Little paperbacks that smell of wet ink. I lay my cheek against their cool covers, anticipating the stories inside, knowing all the other girls wonder what I could possibly want with those books.”