“And each time he finished a sentence, there was a tiny but meaningful lump of silence left behind. This lump floated there, enclosed in the car's restricted space like an imaginary miniature cloud, giving Aomame a strangely unsettled feeling.”

“He gives her a lump of grief that has hardened at the bottom of the canvas pocket at his waist. He gives her a hard lump of grief to use as bait. It rings like a coin in the river.”

“Life is lumpy. And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in a breast are not the same lump. One should learn the difference.”

“The x-ray of your skull shows a large, flobby mass floating inside. I have to consult my colleagues to be certain, but it looks like a long sausage snarled into a lump.”

“Is a man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of impure carbon and water crawling impotently on a small and unimportant planet? Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is he perhaps both as once?”

“Theo felt a lump in his throat, what the hell was all this emotion about? Gods did women feel like this all of the time, how the hell did they get anything done?”