“On sorrow floats laughter.”

“Behind all sorrows in the world Klepp saw a ravenous hunger; all human suffering, he believed, could be cured with a portion of blood sausage. What quantities of fresh blood sausage with rings of onion, washed down with beer, Oskar consumed in order to make his friend think his sorrow's name was hunger and not Sister Dorothy.”

“They had tried doing it by themselves in her room with a cheap onion, but it wasn't the same. You needed an audience. It was so much easier to cry in company. It gave you a real sense of brotherhood in sorrow when to the right and left of you and in the gallery overhead your fellow students were all crying their hearts out.”

“What did the onion juice do? It did what the world and the sorrows of the world could not do: it brought forth a round, human tear. It made them cry. At last they could cry again. To cry properly, without restraint, to cry like mad. The tears flowed and washed everything away. The rain came. The dew. Oskar has a vision of floodgates opening. Of dams bursting in the spring floods. What is the name of that river that overflows every spring and the government does nothing to stop it?”

“Today I know that all things are watching, that nothing goes unseen, that even wallpaper has a better memory than human beings.”

“Once upon a time there was a musician who slew his four cats, stuffed them in a garbage can, left the building, and went to visit friends.”

“Eles não podem agir de outra maneira, os senhores da criação. O privilégio da criação lhes é irrenunciável. Nós, mulheres, temos que ser criaturas, sim, e criaturas perfeitas. Sejamos agradecidas aos cavaleiros suecos, principalmente ao fatídico Axel, por terem desequilibrado tão artisticamente as faculdades da menina Agnes. As mulheres levemente desequilibradas se qualificam como musas excelentes.”